The Roommate
by Roth
Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed. Yes, this story is back in action.
1. Chapter I

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Raise your hand if you never thought this story would be updated. Just so you know, I'm raising my hand too.

**The Roommate**

Chapter I

"_The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is the duty of the living to do so for them."_

_-Lois McMaster Bujold_

Jesse yawned as he walked toward his apartment. His shift at the hospital had been about four hours too long, and all he wanted to do now was crawl into his bed and sleep for a week. As he was opening the door to his apartment, a woman's shrill scream filled the air, and Jesse realized it was coming from an apartment a few down from his.

Jesse sprinted toward the apartment and entered just as someone else was running out. They collided abruptly, and Jesse fell back to the floor. He looked up at the man, and the fleeing man stared back at him for a second then ran off before Jesse could do anything to stop him. Jesse quickly got back to his feet and hurried into the open apartment. The sight just inside the door shocked him. A woman, no more than twenty-three, was lying on the floor; blood was still oozing from a stab wound in her chest.

"Oh my God," said Jesse, but the doctor in him quickly took over. He rushed to the woman's side and knelt down. Through all the blood, Jesse could tell that there was no rise and fall to her chest. He set two fingers on the side of her neck to feel for a pulse; there wasn't one. Before he could do anymore, a scared and angry voice erupted from behind him.

"Who the Hell are you?!"

Jesse turned and saw a young woman standing in the doorway holding a bag of groceries in her arms. When she saw the woman lying on the floor, she dropped the groceries. "Don't move!" said the woman nervously as she pulled a cell phone from her jeans pocket. "I'm calling the police."

"Wait!" said Jesse, but it was too late for him to even try and explain himself. It seemed as though the woman had the police on speed dial.

XVIIIIV

Steve Sloan walked into the apartment and took a good look around at the crime scene. It was a little unnerving, considering this place was only four down from Jesse's apartment, but Steve was pretty sure Jesse was still at the hospital so he pushed it to the back of his mind. Two people from the coroner's office were already examining the body of a young woman lying on the apartment floor. The cause of death wasn't a huge mystery; a large stab wound was in the center of her chest.

"How long has she been dead?" asked Steve as he stepped over to the body.

Not long," replied one of the examiners. "Half hour, forty-five minutes at the most. They're talking to a witness in the kitchen."

"A witness? Do you guys know-"

Before Steve could finish his sentence angry shouting from the kitchen cut him off, and he hurried in to see who the shouts were coming from. "When I came home," a young woman, almost teenager looking, shouted angrily, "he was standing in the living room next to Darci! He killed her! Aren't you going to arrest him?!"

"I heard her scream," pleaded a familiar but exasperated voice; it was coming from a slumped figure sitting in one of the kitchen chairs. The person was apparently trying to defend themselves. "I ran in just as a guy was runnin' out."

"Jesse?" said Steve as he stepped further into the kitchen. Steve shot a quick glance at the woman; he decided she was twenty at the most. She was standing with her arms crossed glaring at Jesse while a police officer stood at her side; Steve couldn't help but think it was to stop her from going after Jesse herself.

"Steve?" said Jesse.

"Is anyone here going to arrest him?!" the woman demanded angrily; it obvious the arrival of a new officer had no effect on her. The woman ran a hand through her orange-red hair, which Steve knew wasn't natural from the thick brown stripe was running down the middle, and let out a frustrated sigh.

"I didn't do anything," said Jesse through clenched teeth.

"Then why were you in our apartment?"

"I already told you," said Jesse, feeling like he had repeated himself twenty times already. "I heard her scream."

"I'm sorry," said Steve to the woman, "but could you please tell me who you are?"

The woman, acknowledging his presence for the first time, turned toward him; Steve figured that with all her ranting and raving, she didn't even know he'd walked in. "I'm Emmie Turner," said the woman using a half-way calm voice for the fist time since Steve had gotten there. "I'm Darci's roommate." She paused for a minute and a distant looked passed over her face. "I was Darci's roommate," she corrected quietly.

"Was that her name?" asked Steve, making a small gesture toward the living room.

"Yes, that was her name. Darci Williams."

Steve was just about to ask another question when a new voice interrupted the interview. "What the Hell is going on here?!" shouted a distinctly female voice from the door of the apartment. It was followed by the voice of one of the coroner office workers saying that she couldn't come in; that brought another bout of anger from whoever was at the door.

"I can't come in?! I fucking live here! When I left this morning to go to work, I was sure I rented this place, and now, you tell me that I can't come into my own apartment. What the Hell is going on!?"

Steve hurried into the living room, hoping to quickly diffuse the situation and saw a very irritated woman standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. She was dressed professional looking, and short mousy brown hair came down to about the middle of her eyes; Steve wondered for a second how she could see. Steve figured that she probably would an office job considering she wore a pair of expensive looking black slacks and a button up shirt.

"Ma'am," said Steve as he stepped over to her. "I'm Lt. Steve Sloan from the L.A.P.D."

All at once the woman's authoritative demeanor disappeared, and her naturally tan face turned very pale. "What happened?" asked the woman, her voice going from a loud, demanding shout to a nervous whisper.

"Your roommate," replied Steve, trying his best to seem reassuring, "was killed."

The woman's mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sound came out. Steve watched the woman sway back and forth for a second and then her eyes rolled back in her head as her already pale face went a shade lighter.

"She's gonna pass out!" shouted Jesse as he hurried out of the kitchen; he, Emmie, and the two officers in the kitchen had been watching through the door. Steve was already well aware of that fact the new arrival was on the verge of fainting and acted quickly. Just as the woman collapsed, Steve caught her and carefully laid her on the floor.

"Oh, my God," Steve heard Emmie say quietly as she and the two officers in the kitchen hurried over too. "Is she okay?"

"It was shock," said Jesse as he quickly checked over the woman. "She should come around any minute now."

"But is Carly going to be okay?" Emmie asked again more persistently.

"She should be fine," replied Jesse.

Steve looked up at Emmie for a second and then slowly stood up. Something about the way she was acting bothered him. The second woman's response to the news had been relatively normal, but Emmie was barely showing any remorse for her dead friend at all. The only time she'd been emotional about anything was when she demanding that someone arrest Jesse. He was about to ask the ill-tempered redhead another question when Jesse spoke.

"She's coming around."

The woman's eyes fluttered open, and for a second, she looked around at the people around in confusion. Without warning, the woman sat up and tried to stumble back to her feet; Jesse kept her sitting with a hand on her shoulder.

"Let me up!" shouted the woman, trying her best to sound authoritative; it sounded more like a weak and whiny child.

"You just passed out," said Jesse, keeping his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm fine," repeated the woman as she brushed his hand off. She rose unsteadily to her feet, but when she saw the body that was still lying in the living room, she covered her mouth with her hand, turning slightly green. "Darci," was the only thing the woman managed to say.

"I think we might need to go down to the station," said Steve. The situation in the small apartment had gone from a routine crime scene investigation to complete chaos.

"Aren't you going to arrest him?" asked Emmie, her tone demanding an answer. Her concern for her deceased roommate and unstable friend seemed to have disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Arrest who?" asked the woman apparently confused.

"Him," replied Emmie pointing at Jesse.

Jesse tried to explain to Emmie again, but she didn't seem to want to have anything to do with it. The woman looked between her roommate and Jesse several times and then turned her pale, confused looking face to Steve; he sympathized with her completely.

**TBC**


	2. Chapter II

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: So, let me explain (like I didn't in my first note). A few months back I got a burst of inspiration, and I began work on _The Roommate _again. The story is now finished, and I working on the last few details. Expect a chapter a day.

**The Roommate**

Chapter II

"_If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything." _

_-Bill Lyon_

"I already told the other two officers what happened," said Emmie impatiently as she paced. Steve had offered her a chair, but she'd refused to sit. "I got off work at eight o' clock, went back to my apartment and slept for awhile, and then I went shopping for groceries."

"Eight in the morning?" said Steve.

"Yes, eight in the morning," said Emmie. "I work at a convenience from midnight to eight."She was gesturing wildly with her hands as if to get her point across better.

"I was just making sure."

Emmie took a deep breath and then continued. "When I was done, I came back home, and I found my apartment door open. I walked in and found that guy right next to her, and Darci had been stabbed. Now, are you going to arrest that guy or not?!" Her voice was near a shout at the end.

"Not," replied Steve.

"Why not?" demanded Emmie angrily.

"Numerous reasons," replied Steve much more calmly than the question had been asked. "There's no evidence that he killed her other than you seeing him next to her, he had no weapon from the coroner's initial report there would have been no time for him to hide the weapon and come back, not that coming back into the apartment where you committed a murder would make much sense anyway, and there was no blood or anything like that on him."

"So?" Emmie seemed unconvinced.

"Also, I know Jesse Travis personally. He is a doctor whose apartment is just a few down from your's. I believe him when he said he heard a scream and went to see if everything was alright."

Emmie crossed her arms and glared at Steve. "Am I done?"

Steve nodded, and Emmie, without another word, turned on her heal and stalked out.

With a frustrated sigh, Steve massaged his forehead with his fingertips. Emmie had given him a headache, and the other woman, who Steve had finally learned was named was Carla Berglass, hadn't been much help either. She had gone to work at eight that morning, the same time Emmie came back, and went back to the apartment on her lunch break to get something.

"_It was Darci's day off," Carla had told him, "but to tell you the truth, I didn't even see her that day. She works as some model's personal assistant, and Emmie works at the convenience store. With all our different schedules, we hardly ever see each other for more than a few minutes."_

Steve sighed and then looked up when heard a knock on his door. Jesse gave a small wave and walked in. "You learn anything?"  
"Only that Emmie is capable of shouting at levels only dogs can hear." He leaned back in his chair. "Have you ever met her before?"

Jesse shook her head. "I'd talk to Carla once or twice, but to tell you the truth, I didn't know she had roommates." He paused. "I still can't believe she thought that I did it."

"You were in her apartment," said Steve. "For some people that's enough evidence to try and condemn a person. What happened anyway?"

"I just got off from the hospital, and I was about to go into my apartment to sleep. Their apartment isn't very far from mine, and I ran down their when I heard a scream. The guy was running out just as I was going in. I kind of collided with him and fell. By the time I actually got in there, she was dead. I was just trying to help, but I don't think I could have done anything, no that I got a chance." His voice ended on a sad note.

"Wait," said Steve, "you saw the guy?" Jesse nodded. "What did he look like?"

Jesse closed his eyes and thought for a minute before he answered. "He was pretty tall...at least six feet. He had dark brown hair, I think." Jesse opened his eyes. "He was really tan, like he spent way too much time in the sun, and that's all I can really remember about him."

Steve nodded and thought for a minute. "What did you think of Emmie?"

"I think she was loud," replied Jesse as he rubbed his forehead wanting to forget the thunderous shouts of the woman. "And to go with what you said, I bet every dog within a block of here is probably howling. Why?"

"I don't know. It just seemed like she didn't care too much about her dead roommate or her friend. All she did was try and get you arrested."

Jesse shrugged his shoulders. "I noticed that part, but I was a little busy defending myself to give her attitude too much attention." He paused. "I'm gonna leave if you don't mind. I went home to get sleep, and as you can probably guess, I never got any."

Steve nodded but didn't reply.

XVIIIIV

After leaving the police station, Jesse returned to his own apartment and just short of collapsed onto the couch. He'd been barely awake after his long shift at the hospital and the added two hours he had spent with the police certainly hadn't helped. About the only thing that had kept him awake, other than the fear of being arrested, were the ultrasonic shouts of Emmie Turner

"I need to get up," Jesse thought to himself as his eyes started to drift shut. "I don't want to sleep on the couch." The nagging little voice in his head never quite convinced him to get up. He closed his eyes the rest of the way as he thought, _"I'm only gonna rest for a minute." _But instead he fell asleep.

XVIIIIV

"So what happened after she woke up?" Mark Sloan asked his son after he had finished explaining part of what had happened that day.

"We all went down to the police station," replied Steve. "Emmie was even angrier by the time we got there, and I think she was about to try and arrest Jesse herself. There's something that just really bothers me about her."

"You mean all her shouting?"

"That," replied Steve, "and all she cared about was trying to get Jesse arrested. She showed no remorse at all for either of her friends."

"What about the other woman?" asked Mark. "Um...Carla Berglass? Now I know I've heard that name from somewhere." After a moment of thinking, he'd failed to come up with the reason.

"She tried to be helpful," replied Steve, "but she was still pretty shaken up. She couldn't tell us much about what happened. When she left, her roommate was alive, and when she got back, she was dead."

Mark nodded. "What did you say Jesse said the guy looked like?"

"He couldn't be too descriptive. He said that he was at least six feet, tan, and dark brown hair, but that's about it."

"What do you think about all this?" asked Mark casually.

"Well, tomorrow I'm going to go and talk to the model Darci worked for and see if that gets me anywhere."

"Yes, but what do you think about all this?"

"I think Emmie Turner has a lot to explain," replied Steve. He looked up at his father, and smiled at him. "You wouldn't by chance want to come along when I see what she has to say, would you?"

Mark nodded. "I'd be happy to."

XVIIIIV

Far from the beach house, a man drove down a dilapidated L.A. street in the early morning sun toward the place where he was supposed to get his payment. He watched the house numbers closely as he drove down the street and brought the car to a sudden stop in front of a old, condemned house. Picking up a small piece of paper off the dash, he double-checked the address carefully.

"This is the place," the man muttered to himself, slowly getting out of his car. He walked up to the door, knocked loudly, and waited. Deep down, he felt like an idiot knocking at the door of what looked to be an abandoned house in the middle of a rundown neighborhood.

The man waited for a few minutes becoming more and more nervous and agitated when no one came to answer. "Damn it!" he shouted angrily after about five minutes had passed. He slammed his fist against the door frame as he mentally kicked himself. "Damn it!"

"Calm down," said a voice as the door opened slowly. "We're here."

The man stared in the doorway suspiciously for a moment and then walked inside.

"How are you doing?" the voice asked politely. With the help of the thin beams of light coming through the boarded up windows, the man could see the outline of a slim figure standing just in the shadows.

"Where's my money?" the man demanded angrily not bothering to answer the question.

"Hold your horses," said the person with a polite laugh; it sounded like one a person would hear at a dinner party, not at the payment for a murder. The sound of heels clicking on the old wooden floors hit his ears, and an attractive young woman stepped out of the shadows. "You'll get it in good time, Robbie." She gave him a brilliant smile.

The man had to hold back a gasp of surprise when he saw the woman standing in front of him. The slim body, tailored trousers, and expensive looking tank top were not what he'd been expecting when he'd agreed to do the crime. Once he recovered from his shock, the man demanded again, "Where is my money?"

"Let's first inspect your performance, shall we?" said the woman with a smile; it was almost like the voice of a teacher. She walked over to an old crate behind her and picked up the newspaper that was sitting on it. Opening the paper, she began to read through an article.

"You got the apartment right," said the woman aloud as she read through it. "The timing was perfect. Everything seems to be in order." Robbie rolled his eyes as he waited for the woman to continue. "Oh, wait a minute," said the woman, sounding displeased. Robbie looked up at her. "We seem to have a little problem." She looked up at the man and anger flashed in her eyes. The woman hurled the newspaper at him, and nailed him in the chest. "You killed the wrong damn person!" She started taking deep breaths once she stopped shouting.

"What the hell are you talking about?" asked Robbie; he was panicing. "And where is my money?"

"You're not getting your money," said the woman much more calmly as she started to inspect her fingernails.

"What?!" shouted Robbie enraged by the news. He took a step toward the woman, but two muscular men stepped out and grabbed hold of his arms. They lifted him a few inches off the ground.

"Bodyguards," said the woman with a shrewd smile. "I never go anywhere without them." She walked over to him and said through clenched teeth, "Apparently, if everything isn't planned out for you, you can't do anything right."

"Now hold on," said the man, but the woman's bodyguards started to twist his arms. "Ow! Please stop! Please stop!" With a quick gesture from the woman, they did.

"I told you to kill Carly Berglass," continued the woman as she started to pace in front of the man, "but instead, you kill some woman named Darci Williams, who I've never any heard of. Now, something is wrong."

Robbie opened his mouth to try and defend himself, but a threatening look from the man on his left kept him quiet.

"I need to think," said the woman as she massaged her forehead with her fingertips. She took a deep breath and the released it. "Did anyone see you?" she asked quietly.

Robbie stared at the woman, but didn't answer. "Did anyone see you?" the woman asked again this time more forcefully. The man still didn't answer. She grabbed the front of the man's shirt and nearly shouted, "Damn it, did anyone see you?"

"Yes!" Robbie shouted back. "Someone saw me!" In return to his shouts, one of the bodyguards let go of his arm and punched him in the stomach.

The woman let go of his shirt as the bodyguards lifted him higher off the floor, refusing to let him double over in pain. She remained silent and the only sound in the room for several minutes was Robbie's now uneven breathing. "Here's what you're going to do," said the woman as she thought out her plan.

"What are...you talking...about?" gasped Robbie. "I want...my money." His demand was answered by yet another punch in the gut.

"You only get payed when you do the job right." She waited for his breathing to return to normal before she continued. "You are going to get rid of Carly Berglass, and then, you're going to get rid of the person who saw you. Understand?"

"I don't know who the Hell he was!" shouted Robbie.

The woman turned and stared at him. "I'm sure you'll find out. I have the upmost faith in you." She snapped her fingers and the two thugs dropped Robbie. He slowly got up off the floor and walked toward the door as fast as his now sore body would allow.

"Just think," said the woman to Robbie as she started to inspect her nails again, "if you had done this job right in the first place, you'd be leaving here 500,000 dollars richer. Tsk, tsk." She turned away from him as Robbie opened the door and left.

XVIIIIV

Jesse groaned as he stepped out of his apartment into the bright L.A. sun. His back was sore from the position he had ended up sleeping in on the couch. "I didn't want to sleep on the couch," muttered Jesse as he rubbed his back. "I told myself to get up, but did I listen? Nooo." A woman's angry shouting caught his attention, and fearing that the fire-breathing Emmie had tracked him down for another round of verbal assaults, Jesse quickly turned around. When he saw that no one was there, he looked around to see where the shouts where coming from. A young woman was screaming at a man who was backing nervously out of the apartment.

"And don't come back!" The woman shouted before she slammed the door in his face.

Shaking his head, Jesse continued walking to his car and wondered what the poor guy had done to piss the girl off that much.

XVIIIIV

Steve's headache was back, but this time it was not from Emmie. Instead it was from the twenty minute, although to Steve it seemed more like a decade, conversation with Darci William's employer, Tasha Grey.

_"Darci's dead?!" said Tasha, obviously upset. "But I just talked to her two days ago."_

_"She was murdered yesterday," said Steve, trying to keep his tone calming. "Now, I know this may be hard for you, but we need to ask you a few questions."_

_"Of course."_

_"Has Darci been acting strange lately?"_

_"No. Not at all."_

_"Has anyone you or Darci didn't know been hanging around you guys a lot when you were out?"_

_"Well, we're around new people all the time." _

_"Okay, but did any of the new people seem strange?"_

_"I don't like to judge people by first impressions." Tasha gave him a smile, but it was obvious she didn't understand._

_"Did anyone seem to focus a little too much on Darci?"_

_"Not that I can remember. A lot of them were focused on me. Like, when we were at this __photo shoot, this one guy..."_

And that was how the conversation had gone on for twenty minutes, and Steve still had nothing new to go on.

"You know, Steve, I bet there is a pretty good chance that we can talk to Carla and Emmie now," said Mark from the passenger's seat.

"Great," muttered Steve. "My headache can get worse."

**TBC**


	3. Chapter III

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Hello, peoples! Chapter III is here, and more are too come. When I redid the story, I tried to make it seem like a real investigation (I seemed to ignore that the first time, but hey...I was 15). I hope you all enjoy.

**The Roommate**

Chapter III

"_No problem is so big and complicated that it can't be ran away from."_

"Their landlord said they're staying at a hotel and threatening not to come back," said Steve as returned to the car with his father; their next destination was the Motel Six two blocks away. "Emmie wanted him to immediately let them out of their lease, but the landlord didn't want to. When Emmie started threatening to sue, the landlord gave in and said he would consider it."

"I'm kind of afraid to meet this Emmie," said Mark with a laugh. "She sounds a little scary."

"She is," muttered Steve. "And she can scream at levels only dogs can hear."

The drive to the motel was quick and uneventful, but Steve had a sinking feeling in his gut when he pulled the car into the hotel parking lot. They got out of the car and walked into the hotel office where they were barely acknowledged by the bored looking young man sitting at the desk staring at a small battery-operated TV. He gave them a quick glance, and said through a yawn, "We don't have any vacancies. Sorry."

"I'm not here for a hotel room," said Steve. "I'm looking for someone."

"This isn't a lost and found," said the guy. His eyes drifted back to the television.

"They're staying here," said Steve, starting to become impatient.

"That's nice," said the guy. He snorted a laugh as canned laughter came from the tv. "But I can't tell you where." He looked up at them, gave them a fake polite smile, and went back to his program. "Come back any time."

Steve, very annoyed by the younger man's demeanor, pulled out his badge and flashed it in front of him. A look of nervousness enveloped his face. He swallowed hard and said with a cracking voice, "Who are you looking for?"

"Emmie Turner," replied Steve.

The man looked at the registration book and slowly shook his head. "No one here by that name."

"What about Carla Berglass?" said Mark, stepping in.

The man looked at the book again and nodded, "She's staying in room eighteen." He closed the book and looked at them. "Is she a fugitive?" asked the man.

Steve ignored the man's question and said, "Thanks for the assistance." His voice was dripping with sarcasm. Steve and Mark left the small office and walked up the cement stairs immediately to the left.

"Here it is," said Steve when they had reached the hotel room's door. The one was missing, but years of rain and weathering had caused the shape of a one to be rusted in it's place right next to the eight.

Steve knocked on the door and waited. There was a noise coming from the inside of the room and a voice shouted, "Who's there?"

"Lt. Steve Sloan."

They could hear the chain on the other side slide out of place and the lock turn. The door slowly opened and a very tired looking Carla was standing in front of them. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that looked like they had been slept in. "Can I help you?" she asked quietly, opening the door the rest of the way to allow them inside.

"We're looking for Emmie," said Steve. The small hotel room had two beds that had both been slept in and a table with two chairs. The remains of a fast food breakfast were still on the table.

"She's not here," replied Carla as she sat down in one of the chairs. Now that he had more of a chance to really listen to her, Steve heard a slight accent to Carla's voice, Hispanic or maybe even a Caribbean accent of some sort. "She had to go to work. Someone called in sick." She wrapped her arms around herself, and Mark was pretty sure it was due to a chill that only she could feel.

"Do you know who would have wanted to kill your roommate?" asked Mark gently.

Carla looked up and stared at Mark. "No," she finally replied with a shake of her head. "I have no idea." She rested her head in her hands.

"Where does Emmie work?" asked Steve after a brief pause.

"A Shell Station," replied Carla quietly. "It's actually not that far from here."

"Where?"

Carla gave him the address and then added, "Emmie isn't a bad person. She just has a very short temper; she actually goes to anger management classes. She's been getting better, but unfortunately, her temper is all she really showed yesterday." Carla paused. "We left for this hotel right after we left the police station. She left for work about an hour ago." She paused again. "If there is anything that you think I can help you with, just call me. I'm gonna be here all day. I took the day off from work."

"Where do you work?" asked Mark.

Carla turned toward Mark, surprised by the question, and replied, "I work for the L.A. Times...I'm a reporter." She gave them a sheepish smile.

"If you think of anything else," said Steve, giving her his card, "call me." Carla nodded, but didn't say anything.

As Steve and Mark headed for the door, Carla seemed to debate with herself. They where almost out the door when Carla said, "Wait a minute."

They turned and faced her, and for several seconds, Carla struggled to come up with any words. "Never mind," she finally said as she hung her head.

Mark and Steve gave her a strange look, but continued on out the door.

XVIIIIV

Jesse collapsed onto the couch in the lounge and let out an exhausted sigh. The morning had been busy, and the lost sleep from the night before and the ache in his back weren't helping. He closed his eyes as he rested his head on the back of the couch.

"Good morning," said Amanda as she walked into the lounge.

"Eh," was Jesse's only reply.

"Rough night?" asked Amanda, taking a seat at the table; she began drinking the coffee in her hand.

"I almost got arrested," replied Jesse with fake enthusiasm.

"What?" asked Amanda, shocked by Jesse's response. "How? When?"

"One of my neighbors was murdered yesterday," answered Jesse, condensing the events from the day before into a much shorter version. "Her roommate found me trying to see if the girl who was killed was still alive and wanted me arrested."

"That' beats my night. I just read CJ some stories." There was a brief pause. "What was her name?"

"Who's name?" He opened his eyes and sat up.

Amanda sighed this time; she hated when people answered questions questions. "The woman who was killed." She didn't bother to hide the annoyance in her voice.

"Sorry," said Jesse. "I didn't know if you meant her or her roommate."

"What was her name, Jesse?"

"Darci Williams, but her fire-breathing roommate is named Emmie Turner or Lucifer, however you'd like to refer to her."

"How did she die?"

"A man stabbed her in the chest," answered Jesse.

"That's so sad," said Amanda, frowning. "Wait! How do you know it was a man?"

"I saw him just as he was running out of the apartment."

"You didn't mention this before?"

"I told Steve yesterday when I talked to the police."

"What did he look like?" asked Amanda more intrigued than before.

Jesse took a deep breath before he described the man. "He was tall, with dark hair, and tan. I only saw him for a second before he ran off." His pager went off, and Jesse quickly took a look at it. "I gotta go," he said hurriedly as he got up off the couch. Jesse ran out of the doctor's lounge without another word.

XVIIIIV

"I remember where I've heard her name before," said Mark with a snap of his fingers as Steve drove them both to the convenience store where Emmie Turner worked.

"Who's name?" asked Steve, a little on the startled side.

"Carla's," replied Mark. "I've read some of her articles. I think the last one was about corruption in some local schools."

"Corruption in schools?"

"Yes." Mark nodded. "If I remember correctly she is an investigative reporter." Something started to gnaw at the back of his mind, but Mark pushed it away. First, they needed to talk to Emmie.

XVIIIIV

Robbie nervously paced his small, messy apartment and tried to think. He kicked an old, discarded pizza box out of his way, and a few old pieces of stale pepperoni fell out onto the floor. His ex-girlfriend had called him a pig before she had went to live with her mother, and despite his best arguments, she'd been right.

Robbie sat down on the sofa that doubled as bed and let out a frustrated sigh. "If I don't find him," he though aloud, "she'll have her damn bodyguards kill me, but I do, I could get caught." He hadn't thought of that first time he'd gone and murdered someone.

Frustration building in him, Robbie got back up off the couch and walked into his kitchen. Throwing open the once white, but now yellowed fridge, Robbie pulled out a Milwaukee's Best and took a long drink as he went back to thinking.

XVIIIIV

When Mark and Steve entered the convenience store, they found Emmie at the counter with her down. "Can I help you?" asked Emmie, sensing that someone was standing at the counter; her head was bent down over an instant win lotto ticket.

"Yes," replied Steve; it was obvious that Emmie recognized his voice because she immediately lifted her head. Her eyes shifted to Mark; it was obvious she was confused by the older man she didn't know. "I payed for this," said Emmie, holding up the lottery ticket.

"I'm not here about that," said Steve. "I want to ask you some more questions."

"Unless you've arrested that guy in my apartment or brought some evidence that proves he didn't do it. I really don't have anything to discuss with you."

"Well that's too bad because I have some things I want to talk to you about."

"Like what?" Emmie crossed her arms impatiently.

"Do you personally have anything against Darci Williams?"

"I have everything against Darci." Her response shocked both Mark and Steve. "She was rude, she was messy, she would always bring guys home late at night." Emmie ticked the dislikes off on her fingers. "But she paid her part of the rent. Truthfully, I'd rather hate my roommate than pay more rent. If you can't guess, I don't make a lot of money, and I have to pay for school."

"So you didn't like your roommate?" said Mark.

Emmie looked at Mark. "Did you not just listen to me." She paused briefly. "Who are you?"

"Mark Sloan." He extended his hand, and Emmie shook it curtly.

"Would you please stand aside for a moment?" Emmie asked suddenly. "There are paying customers here." Mark and Steve stepped to the side and allowed the three customers behind them to pay.

"Have a nice day," Emmie said to the last customer with false sincerity. Mark and Steve stepped back up to the counter. "No, I didn't like Darci. She didn't like me either. We lived with it."

"What about Carla?" asked Steve.

"What about her?" Emmie retorted.

"Did you get along with Carla?" .

"Carly was fine. You see, it was kind of her apartment to begin with. Carly's cousin's ex-girlfriend knew I was looking for a place and told Carly because she was looking for some people to share the rent with. I was kinda having trouble finding a new place after my mom kicked me out. She said she just couldn't deal with my issues, whatever the Hell that means."

"What about Darci?" asked Steve.

"She and Carly knew each other from somewhere, and Carly let it slip that she was looking for another roommate. Darci needed a place to live so since it was too late to take it back, Carly let her move in."

"Do you know anyone who might have had something against Darci?" asked Steve.

"I know about five girls who might have had something against her. She's stolen a lot of boyfriends, but I don't think any of them would be mad enough to kill, but then again, Darci did have a knack for getting on people's bad sides."

"You have customers you know," said an aggravated voice.

Mark and Steve stepped to the side again, and an attractive, young woman stepped up to the counter and put down a bottle of water and a bag of Skittles. "I also bought some gas."

Emmie gave the woman an exasperated look and rang up her purchases as quickly as she could. "Sorry for the inconvenience," said Emmie; she gave the woman a smile that said "please go away" more than "have a nice day."

"Thanks," said the woman curtly as she grabbed her things. She turned around and walked out of the store, heals clicking on the tile floor as she did so.

"Look," said Emmie, "I really don't want to lose my job, and the more I talk to you and ignore the _paying_ customers, the greater that chance becomes. So, unless you have any real reason to continue this conversation, I suggest you leave."

"Thanks for your time," said Steve as he and his father walked away from the counter. Emmie cast them one last glance and rolled her eyes before returned to the lottery ticket on the counter.

XVIIIIV

Robbie was forced to resort to the only way he could think to find out who the witness from the apartment was: _spying_. He was sitting in his car waiting for the man to show up. It had been three hours, and he was on his fourth cup of coffee; Robbie had already visited the gas station around the corner a few times for bathroom breaks.

A car pulled into the parking lot, and a woman with brown hair got out. Sitting up in his seat a bit, Robbie took a closer look at the new arrival. The woman who had hired him had given him a very detailed description of Carla Berglass. Thinking this could be his chance to take care of Carla, Robbie quickly got out of the car. A second look at the woman showed that it wasn't her. Robbie stomped his foot on the pavement got back into his car with a groan of frustration. He was forced to wait again.

**TBC**


	4. Chapter IV

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: I also made the story longer, and I tried to deepen the plot. I hope you like because finishing this story has been a real treat for me.

**The Roommate**

Chapter IV

"_Razors pain you; rivers are damp; acids stain you; and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful; you might as well live."_

It was later that evening that Jesse and Amanda joined mark and Steve at the beach house for dinner. They'd just arrived as Mark was setting the food on the table. After a few minutes of catching up on the normal happenings in their lives, Steve mentioned the case.

"You're still not too popular with Emmie," Steve said to Jesse, before taking a large bite of lasagna. "When we went to talk to her, one of the first things out of her mouth was whether or not you'd getting arrested."

"Great," muttered Jesse sarcastically, putting down his own fork. "What did I do to her?"

"Well," said Amanda, with a small smile, "apparently, she thinks you killed her roommate."

Jesse casted a glare in her direction. "I didn't."

"Emmie's not too bad of a suspect herself," said Steve, breaking up the small argument before it got even more childish. "She admitted to us that she didn't like Darci."

"But Jesse said he saw a man," said Amanda.

"Maybe she got someone to do it for her," suggested Jesse with a shrug.

"Emmie said there was a lot of girls who probably didn't like Darci," Mark added as he poured himself a glass of lemonade "She said that Darci had stolen a lot of boyfriends, and that she had a knack for getting on people's bad sides."

"She conveniently didn't name any though," Steve threw in. "Besides her boss, Tasha Grey, didn't seem to think there were flocks of guys around Darci. Of course it also seemed like her boss would only notice bunny puppets and shiny objects."

"Wait," said Jesse, putting his fork down. "Darci worked for Tasha Grey? The model?"

"Yeah," replied Steve.

Jesse suddenly seemed very uninterested in the case. "What was she like?"

"Down boy," said Amanda. "Remember, she's a _model_. There'd be quite a height difference." Amanda's teasing was met by a small piece of garlic bread being thrown across the table at her.

"I'm not sure Darci's death had anything to do with her job or an ex-boyfriend," said Steve, laughing slightly. He then turned a little more serious. "Something about all this isn't sitting right with me."

Amanda thought for a moment and then asked, "What was the other woman's name again?"

"Carla Berglass," answered Mark. Steve had just taken a bight of food and refrained from answering.

"What did she have to say?"

"Not too much," replied Mark. "She spent most of her time trying to defend Emmie's behavior from the day before."

"She had a lot to defend," muttered Jesse.

"I don't think she told us everything she knew," added Steve, after swallowing the bite. "It seemed to me like she was scared of something."

"She passed out at the crime scene," said Jesse, turning toward Mark and Amanda. "Stormed in demanding to know what was going on, but turned pale when she found out Steve was from the police. Passed out when she found out what had happened."

"Do you think she could have been covering for Emmie?" asked Amanda. "Distraction maybe?"

"I don't know," replied Steve, "but she is hiding something. That I am sure of." He suddenly turned toward Jesse. "You need be careful though. Even if Emmie and Carla had nothing to do with the murder, that guy still knows you saw him, and he knows what you look like. He might come after you."

Steve, Mark, and Amanda all noticed their friend turn just a bit paler. "I know," said Jesse with a slight nod. "I'll be careful." He swallowed hard and then distracted himself with a bite of food.

XVIIIIV

Resting his head against the headrest, Robbie thought of all the other places in the world he would rather be than sitting in the apartment building's parking lot; first on the list was a beach in some tropical paradise, second was lying on the couch in his apartment. Exhausted was the only world that could describe how he felt and all he wanted to was go back to his small apartment and sleep. _"Wake up!"_ his mind screamed at him. _"You can't sleep yet! Don't you want your money?!"_ He sat up with a start and stared out at parking lot. Lifting the cup of coffee to his mouth, Robbie took a long drink of the now tepid liquid. His hands were shaking slightly from his high caffeine intake that day.

Another car pulled in, and Robbie looked up, hoping this time it would be the one. He could tell which people in the apartment building belonged to which car; he'd seen just about everyone go in that night, but he'd yet to see who he was looking for.

The person who got out of the car that'd just pulled in was a woman, and Robbie knew, as annoying as it was, that he was going to have to wait longer.

XVIIIIV

Jesse pulled his car into the parking lot of his apartment building and got out. He supposed he should be a little more nervous, but the one thought clouding his mind was how tired he was, and it left no room for thoughts of anything else. He walked across the parking lot and up to his apartment. After entering, Jesse gave the door gave small push to help it shut and then wandered into his bedroom. All but collapsing onto his bed fully dressed, it wasn't long before the exhausted doctor fell asleep.

XVIIIIV

The sound of another car pulling into the parking lot made Robbie look up from picking at his fingernails. The light of the street lamps illuminated the parking lot well enough for him to get a good look at the driver; it was him! Robbie quickly got out of his car and as quietly as he could, closed the door. "I have to hurry," Robbie muttered to himself. The guy didn't seem to notice he was there, and even stumbled once as he went up to his apartment. _"Maybe he's drunk,"_ Robbie thought to himself. He was watching from behind a corner as the man entered his apartment. Taking a moment to memorize the apartment numbers before going back to his car, Robbie quickly formulated the beginnings of what seemed like a flawless plan.

XVIIIIV

The name at the end of the article burned into her soul, and the woman wished the most painful death on the owner of that name. The article's author had ruined the woman's once peaceful and near perfect life. She'd been working for her father, getting to know the man who seemed like a stranger to her as a child, and dating a wonderful man. All that ended when Carla Berglass investigated a seemingly innocent aspect of one of her father's businesses; all hell then broke loose.

The police had used some of the evidence that Carla had found of illegal activity to further some of their own investigations; not long after that her father was arrested! Now, Carla had agreed to testify against her father in court. Yes, in the woman's book Carla Berglass was public enemy was number one, and she was going to make sure the young reporter paid.

"You have to eat something, ma'am," said a voice, startling her out of her thoughts; He father's butler was looking between her and her still full plate.

"I'm not hungry," the woman replied coldly, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. She continued to stare at the paper in front of her.

"It is eleven o' clock at night," said the butler. "I haven't seen you eat anything all day."

"I had some Skittles earlier."

"Not much of a meal." It was obvious he wasn't happy with the woman's lack of interest in food, but he picked up the plate and set in the kitchen sink.

"It gets me by."

"You can't make yourself sick, ma'am." The butler started to walk out of the kitchen. "Remember that. Good night, ma'am." He left the woman alone in the kitchen.

After a few more minutes of sulking in the kitchen, the woman sat up suddenly and grabbed the newspaper. In a fit of rage, she tore the paper to shreds until there was nothing but a pile of confetti on the tile of the kitchen floor. Her body was shaking with rage and in a last ditch effort to appease her anger, the woman spat on the pile of paper. She hit the light switch as she walked out and muttered, "I hate you, Carla Berglass."

XVIIIIV

Someone or something must have been smiling on Robbie because the guy had accidentally left the door unlocked. Sure, he could pick locks, but he wasn't very good at; it would have taken him way to long to try and pick the lock. Robbie preferred the easy way of getting in; if the guy had put the chain on though he would have been screwed.

Robbie peeked into the apartment to make sure the guy wasn't out sitting in the living room, and then walked inside. He had devised a way to get rid of the guy without getting caught or even having to deal with the guy hands on at all. Before a back injury from an on the job accident, Robbie had worked for an appliance company, one that installed the appliances for their customers. He'd been out of work for almost a year now, though, and desperately needed the money the woman was willing to pay him for all her...dirty business.

Robbie walked into the kitchen and directly over to the oven; it was one of those stove/oven combos. All he had to do was sabotage the oven so that the pilot light didn't light, carbon monoxide came out game out instead of heat. It was simple enough; he'd seen it happen at plenty of homes he'd been too. The best part, however, was that it couldn't be traced back to him too easily; he was making sure of that by wearing gloves.

Smiling to himself when the job was finished, Robbie took a deep breath and then turned on the oven. He hurried out of the apartment and out to his car, a smile planted on his face the entire time. All he had left to do was take care of Carla Berglass, and he would be 500,000 dollars richer; life was looking good.

XVIIIIV

An awful headache broke through Jesse's sleep, and the pounding in his temples was accompanied by a horrible wave of nausea. Turning his head slightly as not to agitate either symptom, Jesse glanced at the alarm clock on his bedside table; his eyes burned, his vision was blurry, and he couldn't distinguish what it said.

"What's...going on?" Jesse muttered to himself as he slowly sat up, which was not an easy task. Dizziness over took Jesse, and for a moment, the edges of his vision darkened. It took a couple of seconds for Jesse to recover, but new symptoms were making themselves known: chest pain, stomach pain, and trouble breathing. The air in his apartment was thick, and his breath was coming in short gasps. Something was terribly wrong, and Jesse knew that he had to get out of his apartment...fast!

Slowly putting his feet on the floor, Jesse pushed himself up out of his bed and started to make his way toward the bedroom door. After only a few steps, Jesse's legs gave out, and stumbled to his knees. The fall brought on a terrible couching fit that left him even more short of breath, and the nausea got worse. He tried to fight the urge to throw up, but it was a losing battle. Jesse managed to empty what seemed like everything he'd eaten in the past week onto his bedroom floor and then broke into another fit of coughing.

"_I've got...got...what do I...need to do?"_ Jesse tried to recall his thoughts, but everything was so jumbled he couldn't piece together a single sentence. _"Get out!" _a voicein his headsuddenly screamed at him. With what seemed like far too much effort for such a simple task, Jesse pushed himself back to his feet and unsteadily stumbled out into the living room.

Using an ungodly amount of energy, Jesse managed to stagger across the living room, nearly tripping on the edge of the couch, and grabbed the door handle just as nausea and coughing wracked his body. Everything seemed to be spinning, and somewhere in the back of his cloudy mind, Jesse knew he was on the verge of passing out. For a moment, Jesse rested his head on the door, which something told him was not a good idea, but he had to wait for the coughing fit to pass.

The coughs finally subsided, and Jesse's shaking hand turned the doorknob. Stumbling out of the apartment, Jesse basically collapsed just outside the door. Like a fish on dry land, Jesse started gulping in big breaths in hopes of oxygen. Managing to crawl a few feet from the door, he turned and leaned against the wall. Although his chest still ached terribly, breathing was getting somewhat easier, and the fog in his mind lifted just slightly. The nausea and lightheadedness, however, were still making themselves known.

The door of the apartment next to his suddenly opened, and a neighbor in pajamas came out with a lighter and cigarette; he was just about to light it when he saw Jesse sitting against the wall, breathing heavily.

"Don't...do...that!" shouted Jesse, surprised by how weak his own voice sounded. The fog had began to clear from his mind and the phrase "gas leak" kept circling his confused brain; they were both screwed if that guy lit his cigarette.

Tossing the lighter and cigarette back into his apartment, the man hurried over to Jesse. "Are you alright?"

"I think...think," Jesse started to say; why was it so damn hard to think, let alone speak?! The doctor in him broke through the fog, and he attempted to diagnosis his own symptoms; it was hard work, but a vague answer seemed to drift from the fog. "Gas leak?" Jesse finally managed to mumble.

"Gas leak?!" The man looked at from Jesse's apartment to the very sick doctor on the floor. "You mean in your apartment?"

Jesse could only nod weakly as nausea and coughing won again. It hadn't seemed possible to the young doctor that his nausea could get worse, but after a couple of seconds, Jesse leaned over slightly and dry heaved violently.

The man seemed to debate for a few seconds, before standing up and walking toward the apartment. "Don't...in...there!" Jesse shouted between heaves; his voice sounded hoarse. The man completely ignored Jesse, and pulled the collar of his shirt up over his mouth and nose and ran into the apartment. Shaking his head, Jesse winced at the sharp pain that radiated from his temples; he waited nervously for the man to come back out.

What was probably only a minute wait seemed like an eternity to Jesse, but the man finally stumbled back out, coughing badly. "Your oven," he said between coughs, "was on...but...it wasn't...working." He leaned over and rested his hands on his knees; the man took a few deep breaths before standing back up. "Do you need…a…hospital?"

"No," replied Jesse as convincingly as he could; his voice was incredibly hoarse. "Just…just…help me up." The man nodded and extended his hand. Jesse grabbed it, and the man helped him slowly get to his feet, but the second he stood up straight, the world in front of him started to swim. After taking one unsteady step, the world dimmed drastically, and Jesse pitched forward unconscious.

XVIIIIV

It took a moment for Mark to figure out what had woken him up; something both loud and annoying had broken through the wonderful dream he'd been having about Hawaii. After a moment, Mark recognized the high pitched ringing as the phone; he was suddenly wide awake. The phone ringing at three in the morning was never a good thing; Mark was just relieved that Steve at at home. He hurried through the dark beach house and was able to grab the phone on the fourth ring just before the answering machine could pick up. "Hello?" said Mark, not being able to hide the worry in his voice.

"Hello? In this Dr. Sloan?" said a woman's voice.

"Yes."

"This is Nurse Greene from Community General. There seems to have been a situation."

"What happened?" He'd recognized the young woman's voice even though she worked primarily at night.

"Um...Dr. Travis was brought in a few minutes ago by an ambulance. They told me to call you."

"What happened?" Mark felt his stomach drop.

"They told me it looked like carbon monoxide poisoning. He was in and out of consciousness when they brought him in. They're giving him Oxygen Therapy now."

"Alright...um...I'll be there as soon as I can." Without even waiting for the nurse to reply, he hung up the phone and hurried back to his room to get dressed.

With the worry for Jesse settled squarely in his gut being the only thing Mark could think about, it wasn't until Mark was trying to pull on his shoes that he remembered Steve. He turned around to go wake his son, but Mark found him standing in his bedroom doorway.

"What's going on?" Steve asked through a yawn.

"Jesse's in the hospital." Mark's foot finally slid into his shoe.

"What? What happened?" Steve was suddenly wide awake

"The nurse told me it was carbon monoxide poisoning. Hurry up; We got to get there."

Mark waited for Steve to get ready, and then they both left for the hospital. Both of them were tense with worry.

XVIIIIV

Somewhere in the distance, there were muffled voices, and they were doing their best to break through the black that coated Jesse's mind. The voices were followed by a crackle of laughter, and then Jesse could clearly detect the strong spell of antiseptic. The world continued slowly coming back to Jesse bit by bit, and after a few more moments, he slowly opened his eyes. The lights had been dimmed in whatever room he was in, but enough light was coming in from the hall that Jesse could tell where he was; he was in a hospital!

Jesse desperately racked his brain trying to come up with any reason for him to be in the hospital, but all he could remember were brief fragments. Something bad had happened, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember what. It was then that Jesse noticed there was something over his nose and mouth. In a panic, Jesse sat up quickly and pulled whatever was on his face down. The world immediately swam before his eyes, waves of nausea assaulted his stomach, and for one terrifying second, Jesse thought he was going to fall out of the bed he was in.

"Calm down," said a voice as two hands steadied him and gently pushed him back onto the bed. It took Jesse a moment to identify the voice, but he calmed immediately when he recognized it as Mark's.

The older doctor attempted to put the mack back in the right spot while leaving one comforting hand on the younger man's shoulder, but Jesse stopped him and pulled it back down. "What happened?" His memory was completely blank.

"I was kinda hoping you could tell me," Mark responded.

In a attempt to make sense of his jumbled thoughts, Jesse closed his eyes and tried to focus. His try was met by more fragments that seemed to have no logical order. "I went home...after I left your house...and I went to sleep. I...don't...I don't remember anything after that. It's...just a jumble of things." Jesse paused when he noticed a new symptom to go with his confusion, dizziness, and nausea. "Why does my chest hurt...so bad?"

"Jess, when they brought you in here you were in and out of consciousness. There was a carbon monoxide leak in your apartment."

"What!?" Jesse winced when the word came out as a hoarse croak.

"Steve's talking to the guy who called the ambulance; they wanted him to be checked out too. Are you sure you can't remember anything?"

"Not at the moment."

"That's okay. Once more of the gas is out of your system things should start to clear up. Put that mask back on." Jesse nodded and slid the mask up as Mark continued talking. "Are you feeling okay? Don't take the mask off; just nod or shake your head." Jesse just shrugged. "Give it a little while. You'll be nauseous and dizzy for awhile, but the chest pain should start to go away soon. Your mind should clear up soon too."

The two sat in silence for quite some time with Jesse trying to ignore the dull ache in his chest and Mark keeping a comforting hand on Jesse's shoulder. When Steve walked into the room, they both turned to look at him.

"I hate to say it," said Steve, solemnly, "but this wasn't an accident." He ran a hand over his face and continued. "Your neighbor said he found your oven wide open and turned all the way on."

Jesse pulled the mask down for a single word. "What?" He slid it back into place.

Steve took a deep breath. "Jess, someone tried to kill you."

**TBC**


	5. Chapter V

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Um...running out of things to say. How are all you? A virtual cookie to you if you tell me how you are in a review. I care! I really do.

**The Roommate**

Chapter V

"_Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Honore de Balzac_

To be quite honest, Robbie was very pleased with himself. He'd managed to get rid of the witness with hardly any effort at all (if the day he spent watching the apartment building was excluded), and there was no evidence to link him to the crime. Now, all he had to do was take care of Carla, and he would be 500,000 dollars richer. Unfortunately, Robbie once again found himself sitting in his car outside the apartment building waiting. Today, however, seemed to be his lucky day when he saw Carla Berglass and a redheaded woman get out of a particularly beat up looking car that had pulled into the parking lot only moments before; even his car put that one to shame.

Robbie watched them go into the apartment building, never taking his eyes off them once, and then waited impatiently for them to come back out. It was almost half hour before Carla came back down, alone. She unlocked the door of a different car and got in. The car was started, and Carla drove out of the parking lot; Robbie was right behind her.

XVIIIIV

There seemed to be a never supply of paperwork stacked on his desk, and Steve was doing the best he could to ignore it; the murder of Darci Williams and the fact that someone had tried to kill Jesse were certainly helping him with that task.

The door of his office suddenly opened a crack, and Steve quickly looked up to see who it was. "Lt. Sloan," said a quiet voice as the door was pushed the rest the way opened; Steve saw it was a very nervous Carla Berglass who'd been on the other side. "There's something..." She swallowed hard. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Have a seat," said Steve, pointing to a chair.

Letting out a nervous sigh, Carla took a seat and then proceeded to stare down at her folded hands; to Steve, she almost looked like a child about to be punished.

"Yes?" said Steve after a minute had passed and Carla had yet to say anything.

"I...I don't know of anyone who would have wanted to kill Darci," started Carla slowly, choosing her words carefully, "but I don't think...Darci was...the person they were after."

"Who were they after then?"

Carla didn't answer right away, but Steve also didn't rush her; if it had taken her this long to come forward it would be best not to push her.

"Me." Carla's voice was barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"I think they were after me." Carla took a deep breath. "I think whoever did this made a mistake killing Darci."

"Why would someone want to kill you?"

"I told you I was a reporter." Carla paused to take a deep breath. "What I didn't saw was what kind. Lt. Sloan, I'm an investigative reporter, and I found some information while working on a story that could get me killed."

"What was the information?"

"Do you know of Samuel Antone?" Steve nodded. Samuel Antone was a powerful mob boss in the city; few cops hadn't heard of him. "Of course you've heard of him. I was trying to do a story about some smaller businesses in LA, and the struggles they were having; one of those businesses had recently been acquired by Samuel Antone. I found out way too much about some of his operations. It was enough to put him away while the police conducted more thorough investigations; I'm supposed to be one of the main witnesses at the trial." Carla paused for a minute. "That story...helped make my career, but when the trial started getting closer, I started to receive threats telling me not to testify."

"What did you do?"

"What do you think?" Carla shrugged. "I ignored them. I figured that nothing could hurt me, and I just ignored them. There was no way anyone-_ANYONE_-was going to stop me from testifying." Carla let out a sigh and went back to staring at her hands.

"When is the trial?" asked Steve after a moment had passed.

"In a month," Her quiet, nervous whisper was back.

"Do you have any of the threats still?"

"No. I threw them all away right after I got them." She took a deep breath. "They were personal. They used my nickname. They'd list places I had gone during the day. It was...it was unnerving. I should have more careful and taken them more seriously, but I wasn't going to let anything stop me from testifying."

Steve couldn't stop himself from asking his next question. "Do you still plan on testifying?"

The clock on the wall ticked off several seconds before Carla replied. "I want to make them pay for what they did to Darci. I'm not going to let them get away with it."

"Why didn't you come forward with this sooner?"

"I was scared. It takes a lot to even make me nervous, but this has me scared to death. They killed my friend thinking it was me. This has gone way beyond things I can just brush off." She took a deep breath. "That's everything I can tell you, Lt. Sloan. I'm sorry if it's not enough." Carla stood up and walked out of the office; Steve followed her.

"We can help you," said Steve.

"There's nothing anyone can do to "help me." I've made my bed, and now, I've got to lie in it. Nothing is going to stop me from being at that trial. I'm going to take a vacation from work and leave L.A. until the trial." She chewed on her lip and then looked down at her feet. "Good-bye."

She didn't look up as she pushed open the doors and walked outside. Steve watched her for a minute, not really knowing what to do. Her plan really didn't seem that safe, but he couldn't really help a person who didn't want it. Steve continued to toil with his thought as he watched Carla walk across the street toward a small red car. He was about to head back to his office when the screeching of tires on pavement caught his attention. Looking down the road, Steve saw an old Hatchback speeding down the rode straight toward Carla.

Pushing open the doors, Steve took off running toward Carla who looked like a deer caught in headlights; with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he realized fear had her rooted to the spot. He never stopped running, even when he realized he would would never make it in time, and could only watched in horror as the car slammed into Carla. She hit the hood of the car and then rolled back onto the road. The car threw on its brakes suddenly, backed up, and made an illegal U-turn. It drove off in the other direction, nearly hitting another car, just as Steve reached Carla.

Taking a quick glance at the tail end of the car, Steve memorized the license plate. _"DX 6742." _

Officers and bystanders were already flocking over to either offer help or simply gawk at the horrific accident. Steve was relieved, however, to see that one of them was already calling an ambulance; it'd slipped from his mind.

Kneeling down beside the woman to survey the damage, Steve felt as though his heart had stopped when he couldn't see any rise or fall of her chest. He gently set two fingers against the side of her neck and prayed; he was relieved to find a weak, however, irregular, pulse. Looking closer and listening just above her mouth, Steve finally detected breathing, which was good because it didn't look as though her bruised and battered body could handle any CPR.

For lack of any better word, Carla Berglass looked like hell; Steve couldn't think of any other way to describe her state. Blood was seeping from a deep gash on her forehead and running down the entire left side of her face. Steve shuddered when he saw her right leg; the bone was actually sticking through the skin and pant leg around her calf. It took all of her will power not to throw up. Her breathing was shallow, and when Steve listened closer he noticed it was also had a gurgling sound to it.

"Is she okay?" asked one of the bystanders.

"_What a stupid question," _thought Steve. "Of course she's not okay," he snapped at the bystander. "Now, please. Back up, people." Some of the people listened, but others didn't. The officers that had arrived at the scene made them all step back. Steve turned his attention back to Carla, wondering to himself if that young woman was going to survive.

XVIIIIV

As worried for Jesse as Amanda felt and as sorry as she was for him having to be in the hospital, she was beginning to get annoyed. She wasn't sure if her friend was trying to prove the philosophy that doctors made the worst patients, but whether he was or wasn't, he was doing a good job. After the third time Jesse'd asked when he was going to be discharged, Amanda began keeping a tally; she was now up to eleven.

"Jess," said Amanda, after the most recent repeat of the question, "you almost died last night. Carbon monoxide poisoning is not something to take lightly; you know that. The least you can do is stay until they are sure you're okay." Amanda still vividly remembered the feeling of worry and fear when Mark had called her early that morning to tell her what had happened.

"I'm fine," said Jesse.

Amanda crossed her arms. Jesse was unnaturally pale and was leaning heavily against the pillows that kept him propped up in bed. "Jesse..."

"Okay, I have a bit of a headache, but nothing a few Ibuprofen won't cure." Amanda titled her head slightly. "I'm a little nauseous, too." She tapped her foot. "Maybe I'm still kinda dizzy." Amanda shook her head. "Fine, my chest is still a little sore. Alright, I'm not fine, but I don't want to stay here; it's weird being on this side of treatment."

"How did they get in anyway?" Amanda asked; Jesse just shrugged. "You have no idea how a person broke into your apartment?"

"Through the door, I guess," replied Jesse. "I don't think they would have come through the window."

"Didn't you lock your door?"

"Yes...maybe...I don't remember. I'm still not even sure what happened. The only thing I remember more than I didn't last night is that I think I threw up."

"Here."

"No...well yeah." Jesse turned red. "I think at my apartment, too."

Amanda decided to try and save her friend any more embarrassment and decided to direct the conversation elsewhere. "Do you think it was the same guy who you saw running from the crime scene?"

"Yeah. Do you know of anyone else who would want to kill me?"

Amanda saw her friend's last statement as a prime teasing opportunity, but let it pass. She could poke fun at Jesse another time, when he didn't look quite so pathetic. "Can't think of a soul. Didn't Steve tell you to be careful?

"I was careful!" Amanda only looked at him. "I was!" She shook her head and laughed.

Mark walked into the room and smiled when he noticed the much lighter mood than the night before. "Good news, Jesse!" said Mark, "and some bad. You are well on your way to recovery."

"Told I was fine," Jesse said to Amanda smugly; she rolled her eyes.

"But you still need to stay here for another day, two at the most. The carbon monoxide isn't all out of your system yet, and I'm not comfortable letting you leave yet."

"What?" He whipped his head back in Mark's direction, and the world spun before. Mark crossed the room to the side of Jesse's bed quickly and Amanda got up from the chair she was in; they both were checking to make sure their friend was alright.

"I'm okay," said Jesse as his vision un-blurred. "Just moved a little too quick."

"Which is exactly why I don't want you leaving yet. When you do leave though, you're not going to be going back to your apartment just yet."

"Why not?" Jesse asked, creasing his brows.

"Steve told me the police are checking out your apartment so I don't think you'll be able to go back there for a few days. You're welcome to stay with us."

"Thanks."

"Do you still think Emmie is the person behind all this?" asked Amanda.

Another voice answered before Jesse got the chance. "No." The three of them looked up to see Steve entering the room; they all couldn't help but noticed the grim look on his face.

"Why do you say that?" asked Mark, knowing something must be terribly wrong. "What happened?"

"Carla Berglass came down to the station today and told me a very interesting story today. She said that the person who killed her roommate wasn't after Darci. They were supposed to kill her."

"Why?" asked Amanda, slightly stunned.

"Apparently, Carla is supposed to testify against Samuel Antone next month. Unfortunately, she may never get the chance."

"What happened?" asked Mark.

"When she left the police station, someone ran her down with with a car. I came here in the ambulance." Steve let out a long sigh. "Carla is in the emergency room now."

**TBC**


	6. Chapter VI

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Keep on truckin...and reading...and look for my new show _Opossum Tales_...okay, that last one is fake.

**The Roommate**

Chapter VI

"_Money is at the root of all evil, and yet, it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes." Louisa May Alcott _

Emmie's breathing was coming in hard pants as she rushed into the hospital and straight to the nurse's station. "My name..._pant_...is...Emily..._gasp_...Turner." The nurse on duty just stared at her at a loss for what to do. "Someone..._pant_...called me saying..._gasp_...that my friend was..._pant_...brought here."

"Ma'am," said the nurse, "I need you to calm down. Can you please tell me your friend's name?"

"Carly-Carla...Berglass. Can you tell me what happened?" She was gripping the top of the station so tight that her knuckles had turned white.

"One moment please." The nurse looked through the papers she had while Emmie tapped her foot impatiently; patience was not something she had been gifted with. "Here it is," said the nurse, pulling out a clipboard. She suddenly looked up at Emmie. "Do you know your friend's medical history?"

"Why? What happened?"

"Your friend was in an accident. Now, do you know your friend's medical history...or do you know someone who does?"

"I know it," said Emmie with a small nod; the nurse handed her a stack of papers on a clipboard and pointed her in the direction of one of the waiting room chairs.

"Fill this out as well as you can and bring it back when you're done." Emmie nodded again and picked up a pen. She sat down in a chair and stared down at the paper. Getting her mind to focus seemed to be an un-accomplishable task, and Emmie struggled to remember anything about her friend's medical health. Tears formed in her eyes, and Emmie looked up from the clipboard, desperately searching a for a distraction from the situation. A man walking through the area caught her attention; she recognized him from the convenience store as the guy who had talked to her along with the cop.

Standing up, Emmie put the clipboard on the seat of the chair and hurried over to the man before her could leave. She stopped right behind him and spoke. "What happened to my friend?" There was no real line of reasoning that brought her to the conclusion this man knew what happened to Carly; it just seemed as though all this was surrounding Darci's murder.

The loud demand startled Mark, and he turned around to see who had spoken. A very pale and nervous looking Emmie was standing right behind him. The young woman no longer looked angry and annoyed, ready to snap at the first person to cross her. Now, she looked more like a scared child, wanting very much for someone to tell her everything would be alright.

When Mark didn't answer right away, Emmie asked the question again. "What happened to my friend. Some police officer called me and told me that Carly was in the hospital. When I got here and asked about her, the woman just asked me if I knew her medical history and handed me a stack of papers. I just want to know what the Hell happened to my friend!" The last sentence came out as a choked shout and caused a few people to stare.

"Please calm down," Mark said to Emmie. The fiery redhead seemed to be close to hysterics.

"I can't calm down! One of my roommates is dead, and the other one was in an accident. I just what to know what happened!" The tears she had been holding back finally came down.

Trying to avoid a catastrophe, Mark gently took hold of Emmie's shoulders and steered her back over to her chair. He picked up the clipboard and helped her sit down. "Listen," Mark said calmly, trying to get her to stop crying, "your friend was hit by a car, but that's all I know. My son was at the scene and he couldn't tell me much else. Now, the best way you can help your friend is too fill out that information, okay?" Emmie wiped her eyes with the back of her head, mascara smearing off to the side, and nodded. Mark gave her an encouraging smile and handed the clipboard to her. For a moment, Emmie stared down at the paper, but then back at Mark.

"Dr. Sloan?"

"Yes?"

"Is Carly gonna be okay?"

Swallowing hard, Mark chose his words carefully. "I don't know, but I do know the doctors are doing all they can to try and make sure she is." Emmie nodded, took a deep breath, and started to answer the questions.

XVIIIIV

For Steve, it had been a long day; he'd been at the hospital since Carla Berglass had been brought in, and the day had drained him. He planned on stopping by Jesse's room to see how his friend was doing before he left, but at the moment, he was looking for his father; who he found instead shocked him.

A very pale and scared looking Emmie was sitting in one of the chairs in the waiting room; her head was lowered slightly which made it kind of hard to make out her face. Steve knew that Carla had been taken to surgery about two hours ago, but knowing the state she'd been in after the accident, Steve knew it was entirely possible for her to still be there. He studied Emmie for a moment and had almost convinced himself to keep walking, but the miserable look on the young woman's face stopped him; as much as the woman had irritated him, Steve didn't have the heart to just leave her there alone.

Crossing the waiting room, Steve made his way over to the distraught looking young woman. "Are you okay?" Steve asked quietly.

Emmie's hands, which had been resting in her lap, quickly went to wipe her eyes, and she looked up at Steve. "You-you scared me," Emmie said after clearing her throat. "What are you doing here?"

"I came here with your friend; she'd been talking to me before the...accident."

Emmie scoffed. "Accident? It wasn't no accident; she was hit by a car. Tell me how somehow can be hit by a car and it be an accident!" It suddenly hit Emmie that she was shouting in a hospital waiting room, and she took several deep breaths to calm herself. Running her hand through her hair, Emmie looked down. "I'm only gonna ask you this once, and I want the honest answer. Did that one guy have anything to do with Darci's death?"

"I already told you," said Steve agitated, but seeing the look on Emmie's face, his tone softened. "Jesse had nothing to do with your friend's death; he's probably the last guy on Earth who would commit a murder." Emmie seemed to have stopped listening.

"Darci was not my friend. Carly was-is-oh...I don't even know anymore. All I'm sure of is that someone killed one of my roommates, and the other is in the hospital. You may find this hard to believe, but I don't have a lot of friends." Steve didn't find it hard to believe at all. "Carly is the only person who I consider a good friend, and all I know is that she was hit by a car. A car! How the Hell did she get hit by a car!?" She paused for a moment in an attempt to try and calm herself down. "Be perfectly honest, do you think she's gonna be okay?"

"I don't know. It all depends on how badly she was hurt."

"She was hit by a car! You can't exactly walk away from something like that?!"

"I'm sorry."

Emmie shook her head and wiped away newly formed tears. "It's okay," she said with a shrug. "I just really want to be alone."

XVIIIIV

Feeling good for the first time since losing his job, Robbie sat down at the card table which served as his kitchen table, popped open a beer, and tore in on his TV dinner. If things went right, this would be the last pathetic meal he would have to spend in the crummy apartment; his next would be in Tahiti or the Caribbean.

The phone rang loudly, startling Robbie out of his thoughts, and he hurried over to answer it. "Hello?"

"Mr. Franklin," said an icy voice on the other end. "My employer would like to arrange a meeting with you."

"It had better be about me getting paid."

"Don't be impatient. My employer is going to make sure all your trouble was worth while."

Robbie smiled to himself. "Where do I meet her?"

Icy Voice gave Robbie the instructions. "Nine o' clock sharp. Don't be late." That was the last thing Icy Voice said before a click and a dial tone hit Robbie's ears.

"I won't."Robbie hung up the phone walked back over to the table. Going back to eating his small meal, Robbie ecstatic about the money he would be getting the next day.

XVIIIIV

"Well, it doesn't seem like Carla Berglass will be getting to testify against Samuel Antone," Mark said to Steve as they both entered Jesse's room.

"How bad of shape is she in?" asked Steve. He hadn't heard anything about the young woman since she'd been whisked away to surgery.

"Here's the list of her lightest of her injuries: a broken femur, a broken tibia, a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and a few broken ones."

"Those are the light injuries?" said Jesse from where he still sat in bed. Both Steve and Mark looked up, a bit startled, but then restarted the conversation.

"Unfortunately," replied Mark. "She also has severe head trauma and some swelling around her brain. Her doctor told me that her chances of waking up aren't good."

Steve shook his head. "The trial is in a month; she's the main witness. Without her, she said it all falls apart."

Mark shook his head sadly. "Did you find out who's car it was?"

"Yeah," replied Steve. "It belongs to a guy named Robert Franklin. He lives in an apartment complex in L.A.. He has a criminal record, but it's only because of disorderly conduct. It seems he got into a fight with a guy at a bar."

"Quite a leap to murder," said Jesse; Mark seemed to be deep in thought.

"Yeah," said Steve, "but I've seen people with no record murder." He paused for a moment and studied Jesse carefully. "How are you feeling?"

"Great." Steve raised an eyebrow. "Okay. I still kinda have a headache, but I am definitely well enough to leave." He shot Mark a glare, but the older man didn't seem to be paying any attention to him. "Mark?"

"What connection does he have to Samuel Antone?" asked Mark, apparently coming out of his thoughts.

"None that we know of," replied Steve, "but we haven't found out much about him other than his arrest record. When I leave here I'm going with some officers over to his apartment."

"Do you think this could be the same person that tried to kill Jesse?" asked Mark.

The question peeked Jesse's interest. "Yeah. Is it the same guy?"

Steve shrugged. "It would make sense, but they weren't able to find any prints other than Jesse's on the oven. The person had to know what they were doing."

"What does Franklin do?" asked Mark.

"I don't know."

"When are they going to be done with my apartment?"

"A few days." Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "I think it would be better, though, if you stayed with us for a little while."

"Why?" asked Jesse, suspiciously.

"Jess, someone tried to kill you. We have to make sure it won't happen again, and I think staying with us is probably the best way to do that."

Jesse looked from Steve to Mark; the older doctor shrugged. "It is for your safety, Jess."

"I know I agreed to stay with you guys until my apartment was clear, but I don't need to stay with you guys longer than that," argued Jesse.

"It's just until we catch the guy. Jess, it may not even take that long since we've already tracked the guy down."

The argument continued, and Mark ran a tired hand over his face, not really wanting to join in. After about ten minutes, or an eternity for Mark, Jesse was finally convinced to stay until the case was taken care of.

**TBC**


	7. Chapter VII

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: What is going to happen in this chapter? Will Susie have her baby? Will Mike propose? Will I ever take my medication? No...to all those.

**The Roommate**

Chapter VII

"_If everything _seems_ to be going well you've obviously overlooked something." Steven Wright_

Robbie walked down the street toward the gas station on the corner. The nicotine monkey on his shoulder was ordering him to smoke, but he had smoked his last cigarette the night before while waiting for the guy to show. _"This is the last time I'll have to make this damn trip,"_ Robbie thought rather pleased with himself.

Opening the door, Robbie relished cool atmosphere of the air-conditioned store; all he had at his apartment was a box fan. He waved to the clerk on duty as he walked over to one of the coolers and grabbed a six-pack. He walked back to the front and set the beer on the counter.

"Hey, Nina."He gave the woman a toothy smile. On some guys it may have been charming, but on Robbie, it was just plain creepy. "I want a couple of packs of cigarettes?" The clerk often waited on him and knew which pack her wanted.

Nina grabbed the cigarettes from behind her and set them on the counter with a sigh. "Your total is 20.57," said Nina after she had rung up the purchases. She began putting them in a bag as Robbie got out his money.

"You know..." Robbie leaned slightly on the counter as he paid. "I was wondering if you would want to go out to dinner sometime."

Nina looked up Robbie with a disgusted look on her face. "Um...I don't think so...I'm busy." It wasn't the most creative way of turning a guy down, but Nina hoped it would do the job.

"Oh. Fine then. Bye." Grabbing the bag off the counter, Robbie cast the woman a glare and walked out of the store. He was a little angry that she had said no..._again_, but he quickly got over it; he didn't really care for brunettes anyway.

XVIIIIV

Steve knocked loudly on the apartment door and waited for someone to answer; two other officers and the super of the building stood behind. If no one answered the door, the super was supposed to open it for them.

"Robert Franklin!" shouted Steve as he continued to pound on the door. No one answered after several minutes, and the super stepped up and unlocked the door.

"I always knew there was something funny about that guy," said the super as he allowed them into the apartment. Shaking his head, Steve walked through the doorway. The apartment was very small and very messy, a double whammy. The couch was messed up with a sheet and a pillow bunched up at one end; it was obvious that was where Franklin slept.

"He's not here," said Steve quietly, shaking his head. The other officers continued to look, but it was pointless; from the middle of the living room, he could see into all four rooms, and each one was empty.

XVIIIIV

Robbie was almost back to his apartment when he saw two police officers walking into his apartment. _"Shit!"_ He dropped the bag onto the ground and ran like hell in the other direction. Robbie only had to avoid the police until that evening, and then he would be home free. That was the thought that kept him going.

XVIIIIV

"Where does he park his car?" Steve asked the super after the small apartment had been searched; it hadn't exactly taken long.

"With all the others," replied the super.

"Where is that?" Steve was getting annoyed.

The super led Steve down to the parking lot and over to Franklin's car. "I believe this one is it." The super pointed at an old Hatchback.

Steve looked at the license plate. "DX 6742," Steve said to himself as he made sure the numbers matched. He walked around to the front and took a look at it. There was a large dent in the grill and one of the headlights was broken, but it looked like Franklin had tried to clean it up.

"He told me he hit a stop sign," said the super. He was watching Steve inspect the car.

"How well do you know him?"

The super shrugged in response. "Not very. He normally keeps to himself. He's here most of the day since he lost his job."

"He lost his job."

"Yeah. Some accident that messed up his back."

"Do you know where he used to work?" The super shook his head. "Do you know of anyone here who he talks to?"

"Nope."

"How does he pay his rent if he doesn't have a job?"

The super shrugged. "Don't ask me. You'll have to ask Hardy; that's his job."

Steve nodded; Garret Hardy, the landlord, had given him Franklin's apartment number and sent the super with them.

"He's probably back in his office now." The super seemed to be trying to be as helpful as he could.

"Thanks," said Steve.

He left abruptly and headed toward the landlord's office which was on the west side of the apartment complex. He knocked on the door, and an annoyed sounding voice responded, "Whaddaya want?"

"It's Lt. Sloan. I need to ask you some more questions."

"More questions!" said the voice impatiently as the door was opened. "Why do ya need to ask me more questions?!" Steve ignored the man's remarks

"Does Robert Franklin pay his rent?" asked Steve bluntly

"No," said Hardy sarcastically. "I let him live here for free. Of course he pays his rent!"

"How? He doesn't have a job."

"I don't know; I don't care either. As long as I get my rent, I'm fine. The how is not my business. Every once in awhile, his rent is late, but my wife feels sorry for him." The landlord paused for a minute. "Lately, though, someone else has been paying his rent. She comes in on the day it's due and pays it in cash. The first coupla times, Robbie didn't seem to have any idea about it, but now, he just expects it."

"You didn't think that was odd?"

The landlord shrugged. "I don't know. I thought it was his sister or something. I didn't really care. The money was good."

Steve shook his head. "Do you know where he might be now?"

"No. I don't hang out with him." Hardy was getting impatient.

"Do you know were he used to work?"

Hardy thought for a minute. "Some appliance company, I think. Oh, I don't know!" He took a few deep breaths. "It might be written down around here somewhere. If I can find it, I'll tell you."

"Thanks." Steve turned toward the door and was about to leave when the landlord started to speak again.

"You might want to check the gas station down the street. I saw him in there every now and then."

"Thanks again," said Steve. He opened the door and walked out of the office.

XVIIIIV

It took Mark a little while to find the doctor who had treated Carla Berglass, but he'd finally managed to track him down; the doctor was just leaving another patient's room when Mark caught up with him.

"Dr. McGowan," said Mark, hurrying up to the man. "Can I talk to you?"

The doctor turned to face Mark. "Oh, hello, Dr. Sloan. I'm on my way to see another patient, but I've got a couple minutes to spare. I heard about what happened to Dr. Travis. How's he doing?"

"He's doing fine for the most part; He'll probably be leaving tomorrow. I actually wanted to talk to you about Carla Berglass."

"What about her?"His tone seemed to have changed to a less cheery one.

"How does it look for her?"

"This sounds terrible," said Dr. McGowan quietly, "but bad. She has six broken bones and severe head trauma. Her friend has been trying to get a hold of her parents, but it has not been easy. Apparently, they're in the Philippines visiting some of the mother's relatives." He cast a quick glance behind them down the hall and asked, "Why is there a guard outside her door? I came up her to check on her, and that guard scared the Hell out of me. Thank God I was on the approved list; I don't think I would stood much of a chance against that guy."

"It's a precaution. Carla is supposed to a witness at a trial."

Dr. McGowan nodded in understanding. "Her friend is pretty shook up. She is either out in the hall on her cell phone or in the room. I don't even think she's slept."

"Do you know where Emmie is now?"

Dr. McGowan shrugged. "She's probably trying to get a hold of Carla's parents."

"Thanks," said Mark, nodding.

"Anytime." Dr. McGowan continued down the hall and stepped into another patient's room.

XVIIIIV

"Yeah, I saw him," said the woman standing behind the convenience store counter as she handed the picture back to Steve. "He was in here not too long ago. He bought some cigarettes and some beer, asked me out for the sixteenth time and then left." She gave Steve a suspicious look. "What's this about anyway?"

"We're just trying to bring him in for questioning," replied Steve. "Do you know where we might be able to find him?"

The woman shook her head. "I try my best to stay away from him. I don't trust him, and he kind of creeps me out."

"Do you know anything about his social life?"

The woman shook her head. "As far as I know, he doesn't have one. He is constantly asking me out and never seems to have any plans, but then again, I could be wrong; stranger things have happened."

"If there is anything else you can think of, let me know." He handed her his card.

The woman nodded. "I'm pretty sure I've told you all I know, but if I do think of anything, I'll tell you."

XVIIIIV

"So, how is Jesse?" Amanda asked Mark as he walked into the doctor's lounge.

"Annoyed at the fact that Steve is making him stay with us until this case is cleared up," replied Mark, "but other than that, he's fine. He should be able to leave tomorrow morning."

"Does Steve have any leads on who tried to kill Jesse or who hit Carla?"

"He found the owner of the car that hit Carla. He's pretty sure the guy is the same person who tried to kill Jesse, but whether or not they've arrested him, I don't know."

"What do you think?"

Mark shook his head. "I'm not sure. I'm still trying to figure out how this all ties back to Samuel Antone. I know that Carla was supposed to testify against him, but what is his tie to Robert Franklin?"

"Who?"

"Huh." Mark forgot he hadn't told Amanda about Franklin. "Oh, Robert Franklin. He's the owner of the car; Steve got a look at the license plate."

"But Steve can't find any connections back to Samuel Antone?"

"Not yet," replied Mark. "Not yet."

XVIIIIV

Robbie sat in his favorite bar, Smots, nursing a bottle of beer. It was only two in the afternoon, but some of the regulars were already wasted, or at least well on their way. He had seven more hours until he could collect his money, but time was going by at a snail's pace.

"How long are you gonna sit there, Franklin?" asked the bartender, setting a beer in front of another patron.

"Till I feel like leaving."

"And how long is gonna be?"

"Depends. How long are you gonna stand there and ask me stupid questions?"

The bartender glared at Robbie for a minute and walked away to wait on another regular. "Dumbass," muttered Robbie, taking another sip of his beer. He looked up at the clock on the wall; only six hours and fifty-five minutes to go.

XVIIIIV

"Hey guys," said Jesse, looking up as Mark and Amanda entered his room. "You sure I can't leave yet, Mark?"

"Positive, Jess. Tomorrow, however, you're free to go...to the beach house."

Jesse rolled his eyes. "I'm feeling ten times better."

"And Steve and I plan on keeping you that way by making sure no one sneaks into your apartment and turns on the gas."

"I'd stop while you're behind," said Amanda with a smile.

"I'd stop while you're behind," mimicked Jesse, in a childish tone. The good-natured arguing was interrupted by Steve entering the room.

"I didn't find Franklin, but I did find where he used to work." He was holding up a piece of paper.

"Where did he work?" asked Mark.

"An appliance company, called Wilson & Co., where you could buy an appliance and they would install it for you."

"That certainly explains Jesse's oven," said Amanda.

Yeah," said Steve, "but he's been out of work for almost a year. There was an accident, and Franklin injured his back. He was on disability for awhile, but when the company downsized, they cut him loose. We found his apartment and his car, but Franklin was gone by the time we got there"

"Any idea where he might be going?" asked Amanda.

"No," answered Steve, "but Jesse, you need to be more careful. With the police on his tail, he might be more desperate."

XVIIIIV

Robbie walked up to the building and smiled to himself. It was nine o' clock sharp as Icy Voice had instructed, and he was only moments away from getting paid. He'd spent the entire day hiding out from the police in Smots, and he was ready for some good news. He knocked loudly on the door and waited for someone to answer.

**TBC **


	8. Chapter VIII

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Okay, so this if the first actual new chapter from the original story. I started work on it three years ago, but stopped...so here you go...**NEW** stuff in the story. It comes complete with that new chapter smell.

**The Roommate**

Chapter VIII

"_There is generally one person in every situation that you should never underestimate the power of." _

Emmie angrily pressed the end button on her cellphone and had to resist the urge to throw it on the ground in rage. She hated feeling helpless, and that is all she had felt since Carly had been put in the hospital. Slowly making her way back to her friend's room, she looked around at the familiar hospital scenes. She could almost recite each nurses' name on the ICU floor.

The hospital's visiting hours were just about over, but thanks to the sympathy of some of the nurses, Emmie was allowed to stay longer with her friend. Emmie sat down in the chair in Carly's room and said quietly to her friend, "They will find who did this, Carly. I know they will."

XVIIIIV

Robbie walked through room after room as a tall, burly man lead him through the house. It was Icy Voice from the phone call the day before. "What would you do with 500,000 dollars?" Robbie asked the man; the silence was beginning to bother him.

"Quit my job," replied Icy Voice as he opened a door for Robbie.

Robbie laughed. "I've already done that." He walked into the room and saw the woman sitting at a table staring at him. "How you doing?" .

"Your mood has certainly improved," said the woman. She was resting her chin on her hands and studying Robbie.

"Wealth will do that to you."

"You got rid of them both?"

"Yep." Robbie smiled. "I believe you owe me 500,000 dollars."

The woman smiled. "Just so I know," she said, leaning back in her chair. "How did you do it?"

"Well, I killed the guy with a carbon monoxide leak, and I hit that Berglass chick with my car."

"Really?" The woman picked up a newspaper and opened it up. "I didn't read about either of these deaths in the paper. Did you make sure they were dead?"

Robbie's face was consumed by a look of pure fear. "Well–umm...you see..."

"I'll take that as a no." She spread the paper out on the desk. "There is lovely article in this paper about Carla Berglass being hit, and you're listed as the prime suspect in her attempted murder and the murder of her roommate. Interesting, isn't it?" Robbie turned very pale suddenly. "And there is no article about a person being killed by carbon monoxide poisoning."

The two men from a few days before came up behind Robbie and pinned his arms to his sides. "First of all," said the woman as she rose from the table and walked over to them, "when you kill somebody, you make sure they're dead, and second of all, when you try and kill somebody with a car, you don't use your own, and you don't hit them in front of a police station!" The woman leaned very close to him and gave him a death stare; Robbie gulped.

"I had hopes for you, Robbie." The woman patted the side of her face. "But you failed me."

"You were never gonna pay me, were ya?" said Robbie nervously.

"I was." The woman shrugged. "But you proved to be too much of liability. Now, there are only two people who can link me to this crime. The witness, who is he?"

"I don't know his name," replied Robbie, shaking his head several times.

"Do you know anything?" asked the woman condescendingly.

"His address."

"What is it?"

Robbie sputtered it out, and Icy Voice quickly wrote it down. The woman smiled and walked away. "Who is the other person who can link this crime to you?" asked Robbie quietly.

"Didn't it occur to you?" asked the woman, looking over her shoulder at Robbie. "It's you." Robbie turned deathly pale as he felt the grips on his arms grow even tighter.

"What do you want us to do with him, Miss Antone?" asked Icy Voice. A smile crept onto the faces of the men who had hold of Robbie.

"Simple," replied the woman. "Kill him."

"No!" shouted Robbie, but a blow to the back of his head quickly silenced him. The woman merely stared down at his limp form that was lying on the floor.

XVIIIIV

"Coby?!" shouted eleven-year-old Isaac Webb as he chased after his best friend; he was nervous. Somehow, Coby had convinced him to skip school, and they were now using the back alleys to navigate their way to a bus stop so they could make it to the mall. No one would notice them there.

"What?" Coby shouted back; he was annoyed by his friend's worried behavior.

"Should we really be doing this?" He looked around at the graffiti covered brick walls. "Couldn't we just take the sidewalk?" Isaac lived in a small suburb outside of LA, and the city alleys actually made him nervous.

"You are such a wuss," was Coby's reply. "Nothin' is gonna happen. We're gonna get to the bus stop, go the mall, hang out there, take the bus back, go back to school, and get picked up. No one will be the wiser." He turned toward his friend. "You did bring money, didn't you?" Isaac patted his pocket and nodded. "Good." The braver boy started walking again reading the graffiti on the left wall.

Isaac let out a sigh and followed. He sometimes wished he was as brave, or impulsive depending on how he wanted to look at it, as his friend, but his parents had raised him very differently than Coby's parents had raised him. A shoe lying next to a garbage can caught Isaac's attention, and he quickly turned his head and saw what it was attached to.

Isaac inhaled sharply and tried to scream, but nothing came out. "Co-Cob-Coby?" No response. "Coby!"

"What?" said Coby irritated, turning toward his friend. He saw Isaac's pale face and looked to see what had scared him. It wasn't hard to find. The body of a man was lying next to the alley wall; a bullet hole looming in the back of his head.

XVIIIIV

Jesse was ecstatic that he'd finally been deemed well enough to leave; it seemed that no amount of "I'm fines" were going to be enough to convince Mark to let him go early. However, he still wasn't too happy about the fact Steve was making him stay at the beach house throughout the investigation, but it was better than having another attempt at his life via carbon monoxide.

He unconsciously scanned the halls for Emmie as he walked. He had heard that since her friend's accident, she had practically become a permanent fixture at the hospital. _"To think," _thought Jesse, _"it wasn't even a week ago that this all started when she found me in her apartment." _Jesse shook his head. He hoped Steve found this guy soon. He wanted his life to return to normal as soon as possible. Well, as normal as it got since he started working there.

XVIIIIV

Steve walked onto the crime and stared at the body lying face down on the ground of the alley behind a laundry mat. A single bullet wound to the back of the head had been the end for the poor guy.

"Lt. Sloan?" said a voice to his right. He turned to see an eager young rookie standing next to him.

"Yeah," replied Steve

"Come right over here," said the rookie, nodding his head to gesture toward a cop who was standing close to the body.

"Lt. Sloan," said the officer he'd been led to, a woman in her thirties with brown hair pulled back into a tight bun. "I'm Officer Phillips. I believe you're looking for this man." She handed him a wallet inside a plastic evidence bag. "A couple of kids found him about an hour ago."

Taking a step closer to the body, Steve got a good look at the late Robert Franklin.

"Careful," said Officer Phillips. "One of the kids who found him threw up."

"One bullet through the head," said Steve.

"Yep, but one of our ME's did a quick once over on him and found some bruising on his head. It's seems as though someone might have knocked him out first."

"They did this quick though," said Steve, shaking his head. "Someone really wanted him out of their way."

"Mob?" Steve turned toward Officer Phillips. "Quick, one bullet. Looks like the mob to me."

XVIIIIV

The woman walked down the hall toward the landlord's office listening to the muffled sounds of her heels hitting the carpet; she hated when her heals were muffled. "Hello?" she said as she knocked on the door and opened it slightly.

"Yeah?" said the landlord looking up from a stack of paperwork on his desk.

The woman put on the most charming smile she could, hoping he wouldn't see how fake it was. She stepped into the office and took a seat in one of the chairs. She leaned back as she crossed her legs and flashed him another dazzling smile. The woman was no stranger to using her looks to get information. "My name is Nicolette," said the woman using what her father used to call her "ditzy" voice, "and I'm looking for my friend's apartment."

"Really?" said the landlord staring intently at her. Nicolette was pleased to see her smile had worked.

"Well, actually, he's a friend of a friend. My friend Jordan told me I should get to know me and gave me his address, but I got a little lost. Maybe you could help me?" She gave him another smile.

"Sure," replied the landlord. "What's the address?" Nicolette gave him the apartment number and waited for him to answer. "You mean Jesse Travis's apartment?"

"Yeah," said Nicolette with an enthusiastic nod. The landlord gave her the directions happily. "Thanks," said Nicolette, smiling for real as she headed toward the door. "You have been a big help." The landlord didn't notice the maliciousness behind the last smile

As she left the landlord's office, Nicolette's smile faded. A bulky and menacing man followed in stop behind her, obviously waiting for instructions.

"I want someone watching this place at all times," she said in an exasperated tone. "If this Jesse, Travis or anyone else shows up, I want you to call me for instructions." She turned around and grabbed the front of the thug's shirt tightly. "No one and I mean _no one _is allowed to improv or act on whim unless they want to make me very angry. Got that?"

The thug nodded, looking nervous despite the 120 pounds in muscle he hand on the young woman; he let out a sigh of relief when she left go of his shirt. "Do you really think this guy is a threat?"

"No, but I want to find out about him just to be on the safe side. Franklin managed to mess this all up pretty good, and it's going to take some work to get back on it back on track. Got it?"

The man nodded as he straightened out his shirt.

"Good. Now where's Brody at? I have a special job I need done, and his is perfect one for it." She began walking again and the thug feel back into step.

"I can call him, and he can be here in half an hour."

"Good. This whole thing is so messed up. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever get my father out of jail."

"Not to be disagreeable, Miss Antone, but why don't we just break your father out of prison. We have the people, we have the means, we even have people on the inside."

Nicolette continued walking, but didn't speak for several minutes.

"Miss Antone?"

"Would you rather have you father a fugitive or a free man?"

"A free man, but-"

"Exactly! If I arrange to have my father broken out of prison he will spend the rest of his life trying to stay one step ahead of the law. Does that sound like much of a life to you?"

The thug shoo his head. "I guess not."

"Exactly. But if I destroy the case against him and take out the state's main witness while I'm at it, well, Daddy leaves jail a free man." She stopped abruptly. "I want you to call Brody and send him over to the house. Stay here until David and Tony come; I'll be sending them over later."

"What do I tell Brody?"

"Just tell him there is a loose end lying in a hospital bed that needs to be tied up. Afterwards, I want him to find out as much as he can about this Jesse Travis." The two parted; the thug went back to his own car to sit and watch the apartment. Nicolette went to her own, got it, and then took off down the road.

XVIIIIV

A woman was dozing on the small, uncomfortable-looking couch in the ICU room when the door cracked open a bit, letting in a stream of light from the hall. Other than the light from the hall, the room was dark; there weren't even rays coming from the setting sun because the curtains had been pulled tight.

The figure made his way over to the bed and looked down at the very still form of Carla Berglass. A myriad of machines and tubes were hooked to her lifeless body, and the figure took a moment to search for the one he needed. He finally traced the IV tube back to her hand and pulled the syringe from his pocket. Just as he was preparing to give the injection, a voice broke through the darkness of the room.

"Who the Hell are you?"

XVIIIIV

Emmie didn't know what had woken her up, but something felt amiss. She slowly opened her eyes and saw a figure standing over Carly. At first, Emmie didn't think anything was wrong; the doctor and the nurses were constantly in and out of the room. Something about the figure wasn't right though; Carly's normal doctor was a short, chubby guy, but the figure standing over the bed was tall and lean. Considering all of Carly's nurses were women, Emmie knew something wasn't right.

"Who the Hell are you?" demanded Emmie nervously. The figure looked up, and Emmie's heart leaped to her throat when she saw the syringe in the figure's hand just above Carly's hand. "Oh My God!"

The figure seemed to panic and shoved the needle into the IV. Before he could depress the plunger, Emmie grabbed hold of his arm and yanked it away from the syringe. The figure whipped around which knocked over Carly's IV stand and set off an alarm. The figure pinned Emmie against the wall, and she let a blood curdling scream as her head connected hard with wall behind her.

XVIIIIIV

Steve and Mark were slowly making their way down to Carla's room. Steve had just finished filling his father in on the Franklin crime scene when a crash and an alarm from one of the rooms resounded through the ICU unit. The guard outside Carla Berglass's room quickly got to his feet, but not before a shrill scream filled the air.

Mark and Steve took off in a sprint from the room, but before they reached it, two gunshots sounded. When Steve and Mark finally made it into the room, a shocking scene greeted them.

Carla's IV stand lay on the floor, and judging by the blood on the bed, the needle had ripped out of her hand; a syringe lay on the floor next to the stand. The guard, who had been positioned outside, was standing at the foot of the bed with the gun still drawn.

Against the wall stood Emmie Turner whose face was drastically pale, and her eyes were staring unmoving at her friend. Lying on the floor in front of her was a large man wearing a white labcoat; two patches of blood were slowly spreading across his back.

Carla's doctor, along with two other nurses, flooded in and quickly began assessing the comatose woman. Steve knelt down next to the man on the floor and felt for a pulse; he shook his head when he found there wasn't one.

"I ran in here and saw him trying to strangle that girl," explained the guard, pointing at Emmie who was still standing against the wall. Steve and the guard continue talking, but Mark turned his attention to Emmie. When he looked more closely, however, he realized her stand was more of a lean.

Mark stepped over the dead man's body and gently took hold of Emmie's arm. "Emmie?" he said quietly. His voice seemed to snap her out of the daze she was in, and her eyes began to dart around the room. "Emmie, are you okay?"

Emmie's eyes shifted to Mark, and her mouth opened and closed several times. "I-he-is Carly-is Carly okay? He-he was gonna…he was gonna give her something. I tried-I tried to stop him. I did! I tried!" Her eyes darted back to the bed.

"Emmie," said Mark sternly but gently. "You did good." He looked over his shoulder and saw the doctor and nurses getting ready to transport Carla; it was probably for tests. The syringe had already been picked up off the floor. "They are going to take her for some tests and make sure that she is okay. Now, I need you to tell me whether or not you are okay."

Emmie's eyes turned back toward him. "I-he-my head?" She reached behind her head with a trembling hand, and when she brought it back in front of her, the fingertips were covered in blood. Emmie's pale face was suddenly tinted green.

"Okay," said Mark, trying to keep his tone reassuring. "I want you to come back over to the couch and sit down, and I'm gonna go get a nurse and wheelchair so you can go get you head checked out, okay?"

Emmie nodded and allowed Mark to lead her over to the couch; she still wasn't too steady on her feet. Mark came back with the nurse and chair just as the doctor and nurses were leaving with Carla; Emmie's terrified eyes were following them from where she was sitting on the couch.

Mark was going to go with Emmie and the nurse to get the young woman checked out, but Steve stopped him. As the nurse and Emmie left, Mark told her to find a doctor for Emmie in the ER.

"The guard said that the only time he left his post was just before the attack," explained Steve, after pulling his father off to the side.

"Why?"

"Apparently some guy came into the ICU demanding to see his father. One of the nurses asked him what his father's name was, and the guy told her. The nurse told him that there was no one in the ICU named that, and the guard said the guy went irate. He was yelling and screaming, and then he shoved the nurse; that's when the guard got up to help. Hospital security hauled the guy off after that."

"What do you bet it was a distraction?"

"My thoughts exactly. The name badge on the lab coat said Lisel Bishop. That name mean anything to you?"

"Yeah. He's an OR surgeon, but as far as I know he's on vacation."

"The coat was probably stolen from his locker then." Steve let out a sigh. "We won't know much more until we find out who this guy was." Mark and Steve both looked down at the body still lying on the floor. "I'm thinking it may be a good idea to pay Samuel Antone a visit."

**TBC**


	9. Chapter IX

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Guess the movie this quote comes from: "I shall call you squishy, and you shall be mine, and you shall be my squishy." I've been babysitting a three-year-old.

**The Roommate**

Chapter IX

"_I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places." Mark Twain_

It did not take long for news of Brody's death to get back to Nicolette, and needless to say, she was not happy. Not only had another person failed to get rid of Carla Berglass, but one of her best people she knew for tracking down information was dead. It seemed like the old phrase rang true: "If you wanted something done right, you do it yourself."

Not to toot her own horn, but Nicolette wasn't half bad at tracking down information or people. Her father had used her several times to find out information on a subject or place and even more times to track down people he needed to "talk" to. Sometimes, it was just easier to have someone else do it fr her so sher could focus on more important things, like her plan to free her father which was qickly falling apart.

How hard could it be to find information on Jesse Travis anyway? She already knew his address, so all she had to do now was dig a little deeper. She sat down at her computer in father's lavishly decorated study and began her research using every trick she knew.

After an hour of work, Nicolette was swimming in information; she knew everything from Jesse Travis's date of birth to what kind of car he drove to the high school he graduated from. Most importantly, however, she knew that he was a doctor at Community General Hospital. It was then that her phone rang.

"Hello?"

_"The guy's going up to his apartmemt, Miss Antone, but he's not alone."_

That did not make Nicolette happy. "Who's with him?"

_"Some guy and then some older guy."_ Sometimes Nicolette hated the people who worked for her._ "Do you want us to grab the Travis guy?"_

Nicolette fumed. "No, I don't want you to grab him; there would be two witnesses that you would either have to shoot or leave, and neither of these two options are too appealing. Besides, its broad daylight out. Do you often kidnap people in broad daylight?"

_"Sorry, Miss Antone. What do you want us to do?"_

Nicolette sighed. "For right now, nothing. Keep an eye on them and tell me what they do later. Right now, I have some favors to call in." She hung up before the caller could get another word in.

Bringing this situation back from the brink of disaster was not going to be easy, and it was going to take some of the best people she knew. Nicolette also needed to take a short trip to the hospital; her planes were not going to fall apart, not when she was so close.

As she continued her research, Nicolette found out more and more about Jesse Travis. One of the most helpful things she found was that Jesse Travis was a good friend of one Dr. Sloan. She knew that name well, many people did. With a smile, Nicolette lifted the phone on the desk. She dialed in the number and waited while it rang.

"Det. Hanson, LAPD."

"Joe, it's Nic. There is quite a reward for you if you find out everything you can for me on a Dr. Sloan. I hear he's a consultant."

XVIIIIV

"Good news," said Mark, walking into the doctors' lounge. "I just talked with Dr. McGowan, Carla's doctor, and he's saying that she is still stable, maybe even improving a little. Whatever her attacker tried to give her didn't actually make it into system."

Amanda and Jesse were relieved; they'd both heard about the near fatal attack quickly through the hospital grapevine.

"What about Emmie?" asked Jesse; he was a little surprised the words came out of _his_ mouth.

"Nothing too serious," replied Mark, taking a seat at the table. "She needed a few stitches in the back of her head, but other than that she was fine, shaken up mostly."

"I still can't believe that guy was actually daring enough to try and kill Carla right here in the hospital, in a guarded room no less," said Amanda, before taking a long drink of her coffee. Out of the corner of her eye, Amanda glanced at Jesse who was sitting on her left; he was staring blankly into his own cup of coffee. "Hey, Jess, how you holding up?"

Jesse looked up suddenly from his coffee and saw the expectant looks on both Amanda and Mark's faces. They'd both noticed their friend's lack of enthusiasm for staying at the beach house with Mark and Steve, and his unusual jumpiness. "Well, you know," said Jesse with a shrug, "not that I don't love staying at the beach house, Mark, but I kinda want to get back to my own apartment."

"That's perfectly understandable, Jesse."

"Besides," the youngest of the threee continued, "there hasn't been any other attack on me, maybe they've just forgotten about me." He gave Mark and Amanda a nervous smile which betrayed his true feelings: he was scared. Neither friend had the heart to call him out on it.

"That may be true, Jess," said Mark, "but I think it may be best if you stayed at the beach house until we get all this cleared up." Just as Mark was finishing his sentence, Steve walked into the lounge, carrying a thick manilla folder.

"Thanks to Amanda's extremely rushed autopsy we now know who our attacker was." Steve tossed the folder onto the table.

"Anything I can do to help," said Amanda, cocking her head slightly to get a look at the name on the folder. "I had a few customers in front of him, but they didn't seem to complain when I pushed their appointments back."

Mark chuckled a little as he shook his head. "What was the man's name, Steve?"

"Well, we didn't actually get anything off the guy's prints, so Amanda got the guy's dental records. When we got the guy's name, Donald Brody, and put it through the computer, well...it was an interesting surprise..."

"I thought you said he didn't have a record," said Jesse."

"No. I said we didn't have his prints in the system; when we got his name, I found he had quite the file." Mark pulled the folder towards him and started to go through it as Steve continued. "Donald Brody was a hitman for hire, and a good one at that. The police and the FBI haven't been about to pin a single thing on him, so the fact he messed up so badly this time is strange." He saw his father flipping through some of the papers. "Brody was kinda a step up from an out of work appliance store employee."

"Yes," said Amanda, "but the question is who hired him?"

"Well, if you guys look through that file some more you'll find who the police believe was Brody's main employer."

"Who?" asked Jesse, sitting up in his seat and leaning across the table to get a better look at the file.

"Samuel Antone," replied Mark, looking up freom the page he was on.

"Bingo," said Steve. "Visiting hours aren't quite through at the California State Prison." Steve smiled. "You want to go pay Mr. Antone a friendly visit?"

XVIIIIV

Despite the flourescent orange jumpsuit, Samuel Antone still managed to maintain an air of power and intimidation. Power and intimidation, however, probably came easy to a man who was being charged with such crimes as murder, money laundering, and arson; those were just a few of his known crimes. He wasn't a very tall man, maybe hitting five seven, but his hardened and narrow eyes said that he was not a man to be messed with.

The guard led Antone over to the table where Mark and Steve sat and the prisoner took a seat. "How can I help you two gentlemen?" asked Antone, giving them a smile; it looked similar to an alligator, baring its teeth before the kill.

Samuel Antone was a mob boss known for keeping his own hands clean. Every one of his crimes had everyone's fingerprints on it but his own. Steve wasn't sure what Carla Berglass found on him, but it had to be pretty damn strong to have sent Samuel Antone to prison while he awaited his trial.

"We'd like to ask you a few questons," replied Steve.

"And who might I be talking to?" asked Antone.

"I'm Lt. Steve Sloan, and this is my father Dr. Mark Sloan; he's a police consultant."

"And what might your questions be pertaining to?" Antone's voice had a business like politeness to it, but beneath the surface there was a menacing tone. The prisoner took a minute to smooth his graying black hair; somehow, despite the fact he was in a maximum security prison, Antone still manage to look and act as though he was going to a business meeting and not the table in the small interview room.

"Carla Berglass," said Steve, bluntly.

Antone's face hardened although the smile stayed, almost as if it was plastered in place. "Ah, yes. Carla Berglass. How is the little Nancy Drew?" His voice was laced with venom.

"Comatose." Steve's reply was once again blunt.

While no one could say that Samuel Antone looked unhappy about the news, they would have to say he looked surprised. Both Mark and Steve were shocked to see a look of honest surprise on his face

"What happened?" His voice didn't contain any sympathy, but it did hold geniune interest.

"She was struck by a car as she was leaving he police station after she told me she thought someone was trying to kill her because she was going to testify against you. Just a few hours ago, she was attacked once again in the hospital. Any of that ring a bell?"

Antone smiled. "As hard as this may be to believe, Lt. Sloan, no. The last thing I heard about Carla Berglass was that my very talented lawyers were working very hard to disprove her outlandish claims; I never wished her any harm." Steve only believed the "very talented lawyers" part of what Antone had just said. "Besides, it seems as though the police are slacking on their own jobs if they allowed a witness in a high profile case to be struck down right outside their precint. Tsk, tsk." He laced his fingers in front of him and widened his smile.

Mark decided to step in. "You know, we'd ask you where you were at the time of the incident, but it would kind of ridiculous."

The smile disappeared from Antone's face, and his voice took on a threatening tone as he spoke. "Lt. Sloan, Dr. Sloan, despite was the courts and the media are saying, I am not in danger of losing my trial. I have some of the best defense attournies around, and they are going to poke holes through the state's case with or without Carla Berglass's testimony. I did not have a damn thing to do with whatever happened to her. Now, I don't know if you're done asking questions, but I am certainly done answering them." Antone turned back around to the guard. "Take me back to my cell."

Samuel Antone stood up from the table, and the guard escorted him out of the room. Once they were both gone, Mark spoke.

"As bad as this may sound, I believe him."

"Unfortunately, so do I."

Both Mark and Steve left the prison feeling defeated. Besides knowing that Samuel Antone hadn't ordered the hit on Carla Berglass, they weren't any closer to helping Carla or Jesse. Both of them had an ominous feeling that their time to help the young reporter and their friend was beginning to tick away.

XVIIIIV

Nicolette loved the sound of heels on tile, and she focussed on the "click...click...click" as she walked down the ICU floor's hall. For some odd reason, the noise made her feel powerful.

Nicolette still couldn't believe that her third-Yes, _THIRD_- attempt to rid herself of Carla Berglass had failed so miserably and ended in the death of one of her father's best men. Casting a glance at Carla Berglass's room as she passed, Nicolette saw a hawk-eyed guard eyeing everyone who passed, suspiciously. How she wished she could just go in there and smother Carla Berglass herself and be done with it. As she headed back to the elevator, Nicolette noticed a red-headed woman talking hurriedly into a cellphone walk out of Carla's room.

Nicolette got back on the elevator and went down. It was the next floor she got off on that Nicolette instantly recognized, thanks to a picture she'd found during her research, the other thorn in her side: Jesse Travis. While Travis couldn't exactly do her any harm as a witness, a plan had hatched in her mind when her informant on the police force called her back; Dr. Mark Sloan had a bad habit of putting his nose into other people's business and "fixing" things. If Travis was involved with this case, Sloan was too, and that was bad news for Nicolette. She'd decided that Travis was going to be her insurance.

Jesse Travis wasn't by any means a bad looking guy, but at the same time he didn't look old enough to be a doctor. Travis was standing just across from the elevator, talking to an attractive black woman. Nicolette strained to hear what the two were discussing as she passed, but without standing right next to them, she couldn't make anything out.

_"It doesn't matter," _Nicolette thought to herself. _"I've put together my people. It's only a matter of time before I've got it all worked out."_ She smiled to herself as she headed to the hospital exit.

**TBC**


	10. Chapter X

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Um...enjoy chapter 10 please!

**The Roommate**

Chapter X

"_Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." Mark Twain_

"So," started Mark, "we have a hitman usually employed by Samuel Antone who's never made a mistake in any of his jobs before who is now dead, we have a mobboss who, unfortunately, seems to be telling the truth about not ordering a hit on a witness, and then we have an unconscious key witness in a high profile case." He paused for a moment. "I'm not sure where all this is going." He, Steve, and Jesse were sitting out on the deck watching the ocean; Amanda had left a little while earlier to pick CJ up from her mother's.

"I'm still not sure we should just give up on the Antone angle," said Steve. "It may not be him, but someone is going to a lot of trouble to destroy the case against him. Maybe it's an associate or a family member?"

"Does he have any family members?" asked Mark.

"I don't know, but I'm sure I could find out."

"Are you sure it's all about the Antone case?" asked Jesse; Mark and Steve both turned toward him. "You said she was an investigatuve reporter; maybe someone else she wrote a story about wants revenge against her."

"It's a good thought, Jesse," said Steve, "except for two things: most of her previous stories involved corruption in schools or I think one guy she wrote about was embezzling money from a community center. Both of those things are bad, but not enough to kill as much as they have. The other is that Carla told me that she was receiving threats specifically about the Antone case."

Jesse looked down at his hands somewhat embarrassed.

"It was a good idead, Jess," added Mark, patting his young friend on the shoulder, "but I think in this case the most obvious answer is the correct one."

"I just remembered something," said Steve suddenly. "Be right back." Steve went inside for a moment, and came back out carrying a photograph. "This is a picture of Rober Franklin. Jess, is this the guy you saw in the apartment?" He handed the photograph across the table.

Jess took and not a second later had his reply. "There is no doubt that was the guy."

"Well," said Steve, "even though he's dead at least we known for sure Robert Franklin did the hit and run and sabotaged the stove at your apartment."

"As stimulating as this whole conversation is I think I'm going to go inside. I'm a little tired." Jesse stood up from the table and went back into the beach house. Steve and Mark both watched him.

"Tomorrow," said Steve, "I'm going to dig through Antone's files and see who might want Antone out of jail that he doesn't know about; hopefully, they'll also of had access to Donald Brody." Steve looked over at his father and saw he was still looking at the house. "Earth to Dad."

"Do you think Jesse's okay?" asked Mark.

Steve shrugged. "I don't know."

"I don't think he's been sleeping. I heard him in the kitchen this morning around two."

"He's got a lot on his mind. We all do. The sooner we can catch whoever's behind this the sooner Jesse can get back to not having to watch his back every second of the day."

"And he can get back to his own apartment."

"And start eating his own food again." Steve smirked, and Mark just shook his head.

XVIIIIV

Nicolette felt like a drill sergeant. Standing in her father's study, she stared at the four people in front of her with a critical eye. They were all part of her "Plan A," and if the situation called for it, her "Plan B." They were some of the best around, and she was positive that nohing was going to go wrong this time.

After she'd taken a moment to explain her two plans, one of the men asked a question. "Miss Antone, what do you want to do with Carla Berglass?" The man's name was Zack Rice, and he'd been a military surgeon, but after coming back home, he'd discovered that it was much more lucrative to work against the law and government than for it.

"For the moment," said Nicolette, "we're going to forget about her. One of the reasons I keep failing is because I'm trying to do two things at once. I need to take care of one problem then the other. We'll take care of the doctor and then Carla; besides, I don't think she's going anywhere for a little while." She took a moment to study Zach Rice. "I'm putting you in charge; I don't recommend letting me down."

XVIIIIV

Jesse yawned again as he read through the information on the clipboard; the patient, a young man, had been brought into the emergency room and almost immediately went into respitory failure. Unfortunately, they had to do a tracheotomy on him; the poor guy had an allergic reaction to some food he'd eaten and his throat swelled shut. The guy was going to be okay, they'd managed to get the reaction under control, but Jesse still hated doing tracheotomies.

Another yawn overtook him, and Jesse thought ruefully about his lack of sleep the past few days. Thanks to his nerves, which were running on high, every sound freaked him out whenever he was trying to sleep. He hated it!

He returned the patient's chart and slowly made his way up the hall. In just a few minutes, he planned on going home or well...to the beach house. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys as someone shouted his name.

"Hey, Jess," said someone from behind him; he turned quickly and saw Amanda hurrying up to him.

"Hey, Amanda," said Jesse; he was struck by yet another yawn. "Um...what's...up?" The yawn stopped. "Is something wrong?"

"No." She was smiling. "It's good news actually. Mark just talked to Carla's doctor. The swelling in her head has gone down considerably and it seems like her brain wave activity has increased. He thinks she start waking up soon."

"That's great. Do you think she'll be able to testify?"

"Now that I don't know. Mark said that Dr. McGowanis still worried about brain damage." She watched as Jesse yawned again. "Jesse, how much sleep have you been getting?"

"Enough." Amanda crossed her arms and raised her brows suspiciously, "Okay, I've been having a little trouble."

"Is it the case?"

Jesse shrugged. "I don't know. I constantly feel like I need to look over my shoulder. What would they even want with me any more? The guy I saw is dead. What harm can I do them?"

"Who knows, Jess, but it's better safe than sorry." Jesse yawned again. "You need to go get some sleep."

Holding up the hand with his keys, Jesse said, "I'm on my way out now." As Jesse and Amanda continued talking, an older nurse walked past carrying a stack of folders; one of her shoes was untied. Unfortunately, the nurse stepped on the shoelace and went stumbling to the floor. The folders went sliding all over.

Jesse set his keys on the nurses' station he was standing next to, and he and Amanda, along with on orderly, helped her pick them all up.

"Thanks," said the nurse as she adjusted the folders in her arms.

"No problem," said Jesse through another yawn.

"You need to get some rest, Jesse," Amanda said, shaking her head.

"I'm on my way." He gave Amanda a short wave and then headed toward the elevator.

Amanda stayed and talked to the nurse for a few minutes, she was new to Community General so she had a few questions, and then said good-bye. Amanda was about to head back to the lab when she spotted Jesse's keys still sitting on the nurses' station. With a sigh, she grabbed the keys and then made her way toward the elevator. She was beginning to wonder if Jesse should even drive home.

XVIIIIV

The elevator doors opened, and Jesse stepped out into the parking garage. Yawning for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, Jesse began walking toward his car. Before he reached it, Jesse saw an attractive young woman angrily kicking the wheel of a very expensive looking car.

"Stupid piece of sh-"

"Do you need some help?" asked Jesse, making his way over to the woman and her car.

The woman, startled, turned quickly toward Jesse, taking deep breaths to calm herself. "Sorry," said the woman, giving him a wide smile as she flipped her long black hair over her shoulder. "You scared me." She glanced at her car and then back at Jesse. "I think I have a flat tire; I don't really know how to fix it." She flashed a flirty smile at Jesse again. "Do you think you could help me?"

Jesse blushed a little and nodded. "Um...yeah...I could take a look at it." Kneeling down, Jesse started to examine the tire; it didn't take a genius to figure out the tire wasn't flat at all. An uneasy feeling settled in Jesse's stomach, and he slowly started to get to his feet. Before he was halfway up, Jesse heard a soft click behind him which could only be one thing.

"If you like the back of your head hole-free," said the woman, "I suggest you stand slowly and put your hands behind your head." Swallowing hard, Jesse did as he was told.

"Rice, get over here!" The woman's voice had lost all of the flirty tone it had before.

Strong hands suddenly gripped his arms painfully tight, and Jesse's arms were yanked down and twisted behind his back. Suddenly he was spun around and was face to face with the woman; a smile, which could only be described as evil, was on her lips.

"Get him to the van," said the woman, starting across the parking garage. It occurred to Jesse that the car she had been kicking wasn't hers. Whoever had hold of his arms, Rice maybe, shoved him forward, forcing him to follow the woman; he could sense another person, maybe two, behind Rice, but they didn't make much sound. Jesse took a quick peek over his shoulder and saw three men wearing ski masks. If his life wasn't in danger, Jesse would have thought harder about how typical it was bad guys wore ski masks.

Just as the woman reached for the passenger side door of a plain blue van, Jesse heard the ding of the elevator doors. Turning his head, Jesse saw Amanda step out into the parking garage. The woman must have heard it too because she stopped getting into the van and turning toward the noise.

Amanda must have spotted them, which wasn't hard since they were out in the open, because her jaw dropped. "Jesse!" she shouted, obviously panicked.

From the corner of his eye, Jesse saw someone raise a gun, and his heart jumped to his throat. "Amanda!" he shouted, struggling to break free from his captors. "Amanda!"

As the gun was fired, Jesse heard the woman next to him shout, but he couldn't understand the words because he was still struggling, His struggles were ceased suddenly by a blow to the back of the head. Jesse crumpled to the hard cement of the parking garage floor; the last thing he saw before darkness was Amanda running back to the elevator.

**TBC**


	11. Chapter XI

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: I have reached chapter eleven. Yay!! Two chapters are left, and then I am happy.

**The Roommate**

Chapter XI

"_Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." Mark Twain_

"Well, Mrs. Clark," Mark said to the elderly woman sitting up in the hospital bed in front of him, "your hip is mending nicely, you're lucky it was only a hairline fracture, and if you're feeling up to it, next week you can start some simple physical therapy."

The woman smiled. "That sounds great. As nice as everyone has been to me here, I can't wait to get back on my feet. Did you know I was supposed to be on a hiking trip this week?"

Mark smiled, knowing full well the woman was supposed to be on a hiking trip; she'd told just about every staff member at Community General. Mrs. Clark, though being well into her sixties, was not a woman who wanted to slow down.

Mark was about to continue in his explanation when a nurse stuck her head into the room and interrupted him. "Dr. Sloan, Dr. Bently is looking for you, and she is very upset. She's already had hospital security and the police called."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know. She just came off the elevator, shouted at me to find you and then had the nurse at the desk call hospital security, and she called the cops."

Mark's brows creased in worry and confusion, and he turned back around to his patient. "Mrs. Clark, will you please excuse me for a moment?"

The elderly woman nodded, and Mark followed the nurse out of the room. It took about two minutes to find Amanda, who was pacing frantically in front of the nurses' station. The moment she saw Mark, Amanda went running up to him, grabbing hold of his arms tightly. "Mark," she nearly shouted, "they got Jesse!"

It felt like ice had dropped into his stomach. "Who, Amanda? Who got Jesse?"

The distraught doctor let go of Mark'a arm and ran a trembling hand through her hair. "I don't know. Jess-Jesse was on his way back to the beach house, and we stopped and talked for a couple minutes before he left. He...um...he left his keys on the station, and I was going to take them down to him." She took a deep breath, and Mark helped her over to a chair.

"I-I sent hospital security down to the parking garage. When I went-went down there, this huge guy had a hold of Jesse and was forcing toward a van. There was two other guys behing them, and then a woman was getting into the van."

"Do you think you could describe the van?"

"Uh...maybe. It was just a plain blue van, no logo or anything, and I never saw the plates." She took another deep breath. "I shouted at them; I didn't really think, I just shouted. Jesse heard me and started struggling and shouting my name. The guy behind him pulled out a gun and fired."

Mark's jaw dropped. "Are you okay? Did you-"

"I'm fine, Mark. The guy missed. The last thing I saw before I ran back to the elevator was the guy hitting Jesse on the back of the head." She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. "I just ran, Mark."

Slowly putting his arm around Amanda's shoulders, he did his best to comfort her. "It's okay, Amanda. It's okay. We'll find him; we'll find him." He paused for a moment to rub her arm soothingly. "Is there anything else you can remember? Anything at all?"

Amanda concentrated hard, trying to remember anything other than the terrified look on Jesse's face and the sound of the gun. "The woman, she said something weird, shouted actually. She told the guy 'Don't you shoot, you moron.' The woman was in charge, Mark. I could tell; she was in charge."

"Anything else about her?"

Amanda leaned forward, out from Mark's arms, and rested her forhead on the palm of her hand. "She was dressed very nice? I mean her clothes...they were really expensive looking."

Mark nodded in understanding and put his arm back around Amanda's shoulders; he suddenly realized how badly she was shaking. "We're going to get him back, Amanda. We're going to get Jesse back."

XVIIIIV

If he really paused to think about it, Steve would have to give himself a ticket. He'd driven as fast as he possibly could to the hospital, all the while worrying about Jesse, Amanda, and his father. The phone call to the station had been brief, but the second he'd heard that there had been a frantic phone call from a Dr. Bently at Community General, he'd started toward his car.

He was now rounding the corner toward the nurses' station as his imagination came up with some horrible possibilities as to why Amanda would have called; most of them involved Samuel Antone's thugs. What he saw, however, did not match what his imagination had come up with; hospital security was talking to a very distraught Amanda while his father had his arm around her shoulders.

"Dad, what happened?" asked Steve, running up to them both. The absence of a certain third person sent a cold chill through his body.

"Steve, I was just about to call you." Mark gave Amanda's shoulder a comforting squeeze as he got to his feet.

"I heard the call and came down as soon as I could. What happened?"

Mark took a deep breath, and Steve knew it wasn't going to be good news. Setting his hand on Steve's shoulder, Mark spok as calmly as he could. "Steve, Jess-Jesse was just kidnapped in the parking garage."

XVIIIIV

Jesse's return to consciousness was far from a pleasent one. His head throbbed, there was an annoying buzz in his ears, he felt nauseous, and it didn't help that whatever he was laying on seemed to be moving; he didn't dare open his eyes though. His memory was foggy, but a feeling of terror in his gut forced him to keep his eyes closed. If there was someone else near him, he did not want them to know he was awake.

The buzzing in his ears slowly faded away, and he could hear the distinct sound of cars on a highway; he was in the van!

A bump in the road caused the van to jerk harshly, and Jesse's already throbbing head bounced hard on the floor of the van. Involuntarily, Jesse moaned in pain and tried to curl up on himself.

"He's wakin' up," said an irritated voice from somewhere in the van.

"Take care of him then." It was the woman's voice from earlier, but now it sounded colder.

Jesse wondered what she meant but only for a moment. Searing pain shot through his skull as a hard object connected with his head. Blackness clawed at the edges of Jesse's mind, and he tried to fight it. The last thing Jesse heard before the darkness won was the woman saying, "Hope you didn't hit him too hard..."

XVIIIIV

Mark, Steve, and Amanda were sitting out on the deck, staring sadly at the ocean. Mark and Amanda had been praying that Steve would bring some good news about Jesse but no such luck.

"Well, I dug deeper into the Antone family and enterprises," said Steve. He, Amanda, and Mark had gone to the beach house after Amanda had been questioned by both hospital security and the police. "Are they getting the tape from the parking garage?"

"They've already gotten it," said Mark. "Unfortunately there was nothing too helpful on it. The men wore masks and the plate of the van wasn't visible. The only person who was visible was the woman, and it's not even that clear." Mark turned toward Steve. "What did you find? Are there any of Antone's "friends" that may have wanted to try and destroy the case against him?"

"I didn't find any friends that may have wanted to destroy the case, but I did find someone else." He paused for a second to take a deep breath. "His daughter, Nicolette Antone."

Mark and Amanda were both apparently shocked. "He has a daughter?" said Mark.

"Yeah. Were looking through everything we could to try and find someone or anything to get a lead. Someone started taking a look at Antone's businesses and Nicolette's name was on every employee roster. We dug a little deeper, which wasn't easy; she's pretty damn elusive. We still haven't managed to get a picture of her. She went to college at Berkley for communications, but about halfway through switched to business. It seems that she's been working at almost all of his father's businesses." He paused. "She is mainly in charge of hiring and firing employees."

"So finding Robert Franklin would have been no problem for her?" said Amanda; she was still shaken up from the hospital.

"Exactly," said Steve. "Amanda, you said you got a look at the woman?" She nodded. "Since the tape isn't going to be much help, do you think you could recognize her if we got the picture?"

"Most definately."

"Good. We're going over there to speak to her tomorrow; she still lives at the Antone Estate. Without a positive ID, however, we can't do anything more than talk to her. If she's anything like her father, she may not even talk to us."

Mark saw the dejected looks on both Steve and Amanda's faces and couldn't help but feel the same way. "We're going to get him back, you two. We're going to get Jesse back!" At the moment, he wished he felt half as confident as he sounded.

XVIIIIV

Jesse's second return to consciousness was even worse than his first. All of his senses were slowly coming back to him, but not in a pleasent way. His head throbbed worse than ever, like a hangover on overdrive, and he could feel the distinct sticky wetness of blood on the side of his face. There was a coppery taste in his mouth, and after feeling around for a second with his tounge, Jesse found a cut on the inside of his cheek.

The floor he was laying on was hard, and Jesse was about to push himself up, but he found his arms were tied tightly behind his back. Straining against the ropes, Jesse tried to get his hands free; he only succeeded in making his wrists very sore. It was then he decided it was time to open his eyes; he found nothing but dark.

The sound of heels on a hard floor filled Jesse's ears, aggravting his already aching head, and the sound drew closer and closer to where ever he was. Jesse immediately stopped moving; the last thing he wanted was for his captors to know he was awake if what happened earlier was any indication of what would happen again.

The sound of heels got louder and louder and then stopped abruptly. Light suddenly flooded the space he was in, and Jesse cracked his eyes against the bright light. It took a moment and a lot of blinking for his eyes to adjust to the light, but once they did, Jesse could make out the slim form of the woman from earlier standing in the doorway. He realized he was in some sort of closet.

"You guys are keeping him in the laundry room," said the woman, turning to look over her shoulder. Jesse took that moment to take a look at his surroundings; judging by the washer and dryer Jesse could just barely make out in the light, he was indeed in a laundry room.

"You said keep him out of the way," said a voice from somewhere behind the woman. Jesse heard the sound of footsteps on a hard floor and then another figure appeared in the doorway.

The woman scoffed. "You could have made our guest a little more comfortable." Her voice was dripping with sarcasm and contempt.

"How long is he going to be here?"

"At least a day or two. Don't hurt him...too badly. He's my insurance; that may have been my problem from the start, I didn't take the time to get insurance." There was a long pause, and Jesse felt his stomach drop; he didn't like the sound of being insurance. "Take care of him; we're going to need him alive...at least for awhile."

Jesse shuddered at the tone of her words. She looked away from the floor as her companion stepped into the laundry room. None too gently, he grabbed Jesse's arm and hauled him to his feet. It occurred to Jesse that it probably wasn't a good thing that he wasn't wearing the mask he'd been wearing earlier.

XVIIIIV

An entire day went by, and they were no closer to finding Jesse. Tracking down a picture of Nicolette Antone was proving to be difficult; she was apparently not a very public person. But after what seemed like hours of searching, Steve managed to find a copy of Nicolette's picture from her old college. It was a couple years old, but Steve was hoping it would be enough.

The video, when looked at closer, wasn't any clearer; a half decent lawyer would be able to put doubt into a jury's mind over the image on the tape. Their only hope right now was that Amanda had gotten a good enough look at the woman to identify her. In fact he was walking down the halls of Community General to the pathalogy lab to talk to Amanda; he highly doubted she was getting much work done though with the fact Jesse was missing.

As he somewhat expected, Amanda was sitting at her desk, tapping her pen on a stack of paperwork, and her head resting on her hand; she looked tired and anxious. When she didn't acknowledge him right away, Steve cleared his throat. "Um...Amanda?"

She started and abruptly dropped her pen. "Steve! Sorry...I kind of spaced out for a moment." She paused to take a deep breath. "Have you got any news?"

"We finally managed to get a picture of Antone's daughter. The woman's face on the tape is too blurry to compare the two, but you got a look at her." He gave Amanda the copy of Nicolette Antone's photo. "Was this the woman in the parking garage?"

Amanda studied the photo for no more than five seconds before she answered. "That's her, Steve. There's no doubt in my mind; that's her."

Steve nodded and took the photo back. "That's good. That means we can bring her in for questioning and hopefully get a warrent for her arrest."

Amanda's next question came out of the blue. "Where's Mark?"

Taking a quick glance at his watch, Steve replied, "Hopefully at home catching up on sleep. I got up to get a drink last night, I think it was around three, and Dad was sitting in the living room. I don't think he got any sleep last night, not that I fared much better; he's really worried about Jesse."

"We all are..." The end of her sentence was cut off by a large yawn.

"You not sleep much either?"

Amanda shook her head sadly. "I just keep seeing it over and over in my head. I feel like I should have been able to do more."

"Amanda-"

"Steve, don't try and change my mind. Deep down I know there was nothing else I could have done, save for being shot, but it doesn't really change the way I feel." She rubbed her tired eyes.

"Maybe you should get some rest too."

"Yeah well there's a difference between Mark's and my job when we're tired: none of patients are life or death cases." From the look on Steve's face, she knew he choice of words had not been the best. "I'm sorry, Steve."

"It's okay."

"We're going to get him back, Steve."

"I know, and I'm gonna start right now." He started toward the lab door. "I'm going to pay Nicolette Antone a nice visit. Do you think showing up at ten is a little early?"

XVIIIIV

Every part of Jesse's body ached. He was trying his best to diagnose himself, but it was hard. He was pretty sure nothing was broken, except for his left wrist; one of his captors had decided that he needed to meet the wall, and upon putting his arms out to brace himself, Jesse's felt something snap.

He was once again in the laundry room with the lights out, but the door was open letting light in not that it really mattered since his eyes were closed tightly.

"I said not to hurt him too badly," said the woman who was kneeling next to him; her voice didn't hold concern, just annoyance.

"You also said to keep him subdued," said the large man behind her.

"That's why you brought the drugs."

"Why waste perfectly good sedatives when you can keep a man subdued and yourself entertained."

There was a pause and then Jesse felt a cool hand on his forehead. One of his eyelids was pulled back, and bright light assulted his eyes. Jesse groaned and pulled his head out of the woman's grasp.

"He's okay," said the woman. "You've probably given him a concussion though. From now on, use the sedatives; I'm not paying you to use my insurance as a punching bag."

"Insurance?"

Jesse heard the woman sigh and sensed her stand back up. "Yes, insurance." Another pause. "Use the sedatives from now on."

Jesse heard the two walk away from him, but he strained his ears to listen to them because the two had not stopped talking.

"You've got to tell us what to do, Miss Antone."

The woman sighed loudly. "You'll be keeping him here anywhere from a day to about a week, depending on how the next few days go." Jesse's heart fell; those were not good looking odds. "I'm not going to be able to make it out here for the next few days. I am going to call you everyday between one and one thirty to keep you updated; that includes today. If I don't call, something has gone wrong. If that happens, I want him taken care of the _next day._ That day wait is important." Jesse heard heels on the floor and figured the woman was leaving. "Good bye, Rice. Do _not_ let me down."

More footsteps sounded. "What are we supposed to do with him?" asked a new voice.

The clicking on the floor stopped, and Jesse strained to listen; what were they going to do with him?

"Bury him; he's a dead man anyway."

Jesse couldn't control his gasp of shock, and he opened his eyes again just in time to see the woman leave through the door. Someone suddenly grasped him roughly from behind and took a tight hold on his left arm. This was, unfortunately, the arm with the broken wrist, and Jesse cried out when it slammed hard against the hard floor.

"You got'em, Ricky?" asked whoever had hold of his arm.

"Yeah. I got'em."

Before Jesse could figure out what the guy had, Jesse felt the distinct pain of a needle being inserted into his arm, and then it felt as though something cold was running through his veins. The world began to blur and a quiet buzzing filled his ears. Jesse fought the black for as long as he could, but then finally closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

**TBC**


	12. Chapter XII

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: "Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la My-Oh-My Looks like the boys too shy..." Um...sorry. Got a song in my heart, peoples.

**The Roommate**

Chapter XII

"_Necessity is the mother of taking chances." Mark Twain_

The Antone Estate was impressive. It was located in one of the higher end neighborhoods of L.A. (not where a bunch a stars lived, but a nice, subdued, private area), and a large black iron gate blocked the drive to keep out unwanted visitors; Steve had a feeling that he and the detective next him were definately unwanted visitors.

Looking through the bars, Steve could see an expensive looking little red car sitting at the front of the driveway with the vanity plate "Nic 16;" he'd definately found the right house. Looking around, Steve spotted a speaker box on the stone pillar that made up part of the fence. He pressed the call button and waited.

After a few moments, a male voice crackled from the other end; it reminded Steve of a speaker in a drivethrough. "Who is this?"

"Lt. Steve Sloan, LAPD, and Det. Larry Miller. We're here to talk with Nicolette Antone."

There was a minute long pause before the voice responded. "Concerning what?"

"Something that doesn't concern you."

"I'm not sure Miss Antone is up to seeing anyone-"

"I don't really care if she is up for seeing anyone because I've got a warrent in my pocket that says she'll see me whether she wants to or not."

A new voice, this time a woman's, crackled over the speaker. "No need to be rude, Lt. Sloan. I'll be happy to speak with you. Come on up."

The gate in front of Steve opened up, and he made his way up the path to the front of the house. The front door was already open and a slim figure was standing in the doorway. "What can I do for you, Lt. Sloan?"

Nicollete Antone was very attractive young woman with a slim, toned body, and a confident demeanor. She had glossy black hair that went just past her shoulders and soft facial features. It was her eyes, however, that took away from it all; they were her father's eyes: dark brown orbs with an overwhelming look of hatred.

"Are you Nicolette Antone?" asked Steve.

"Yes, I am. Is there a problem?" She flashed him a smile.

"I'm afraid there is. You're under arrest."

Nicolette's smile never faltered. "My...that is a problem."

XVIIIIV

A distant buzz hit Carla's ears, breaking through a fog she didn't know had been there. She tried to escape it by turning her head, but that only served to awaken a dull ache in her body. A pained groan broke through the buzzing, and it took Carla a moment to realize that it had come from herself.

She tried to open her eyes, but it felt as though a superhuman force was holding them down. The fog slowly began to blanket her mind again, and she gave into the exhaustion that had been clawing at her mind.

XVIIIIV

Steve stared at the woman sitting in the interregation room and fumed. She was calmly inspecting her nails and straigthening out her dress pants. It didn't seem to matter who spoke to her, Nicolette's answer was always the same: "I'll speak with you tomorrow."

It didn't make any sense. Most people would have asked for their lawyer, but Nicolette just kept repeating that she wouldn't talk to anyone until tomorrow.

"Steve!" He jumped when he heard his name; Steve turned around and saw his father coming in. "I heard you brought in Nicolette."

"Dad, I thought you were at home sleeping."

"It's noon, Steve. I don't sleep till noon." He paused and looked through the mirror into the interrogation room; Nicolette was now resting her chin on her hand and looking rather bored. "Is that her?"

"Yeah, Dad, but she's not talking."

"Is she waiting for her lawyer?"

"No." Steve shook his head. "That's just it. She hasn't even asked for a lawyer. She keeps saying that she won't talk to anyone until tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

Mark walked up to the mirror and stared at the woman; he, like his son, fumed. "Look at her. She doesn't even look like she's been arrested; she looks bored." To put it the best way possible, Nicolette looked more like she had received a detention rather than been arrested.

"I think almost everyone in the station has tried talking to her, but no such luck. We even told her that we have a witness, but that didn't seem to do a damn thing." Steve slammed his hand against the wall and got a small bit of satisfaction when Nicolette jumped at the noise in the interrogation room.

Mark shook his head sadly, and he and Steve both jumped a little when Mark's cellphone suddenly went off. The older Sloan quickly answered it as Steve went over to the most recent person who'd tried to speak with Nicolette Antone.

"Hello?" Mark said into his phone.

_"Mark? This is Dr. McGowan. I have a bit of good news for you. Remember when I told you that Carla Berglass's brain wave activity had increased dramatically?"_

"Yes?"

_"Well, this morning she started to wake up. She hasn't woken up completely yet, but she is responding to stimuli. The prognosis is looking good, and the State just might get their witness back."_

"That's great."

_"It is!"_ Mark could hear a page in the background of the call. _"Sorry, Mark, but I've got to go. __Good luck finding, Dr. Travis. We really need him here."_

For a moment, Mark had actually felt better, but with the mention of Jesse, his heart sank. He couldn't help but feel like they were running out of time, and Nicolette Antone was sitting there watching it tick away and smiling.

"What was that about?" asked Steve.

Mark smiled. "I wonder if Miss Antone would open up more if she knew the State has a good chance of getting their main witness back." Steve smiled back.

XVIIIIV

Jesse had fallen into a deep, albeit uncomfortable sleep, when he was woken the sound of the door of his laundry room prison hitting the wall and annoying light once again blanketing him. Slowly opening his eyes, Jesse saw the guy called Rice looming in the doorway. There was a smile on his face, and Jesse knew it could not be a good thing.

"Guess what?" Jesse didn't say anything, and Rice took that as a sign to continue. "We never got a call from Miss Antone today. How long can you hold your breath?"

Jesse didn't know what that meant, and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know. Jesse's heart sank even lower than before as the door closed and left him in the darkness. He pulled at the ropes around his wrists, but they stayed tied. His hope was slowly dying away, and he could do nothing but pray that Mark, Steve, and Amanda would manage to find him.

XVIIIIV

Samuel Antone laid on his bunk, staring blankly at the ceiling. His trial was drawing closer, and as calm as he usually seemed about it, the thought of the trial did make him very nervous. When those two Sloans had told him that Carla Berglass was comatose in the hospital, his spirits had risen, but then something occurred to him the second they tried to accuse him of setting up the hit. He'd been telling the truth when he said he knew nothing about the hit on Carla Berglass, but it then occurred to him if they somehow managed to connect the hit back to him he was screwed. There would be no way in Hell his lawyers would be able to get him off if the jury thought he tried to kill the State's main witness.

"You've got a visitor, Antone," said a voice from the bars of his cell. Antone looked up and saw a guard glaring back at him; he wasn't exactly a popular inmate.

"If it's those Sloans again I think I'll opt out."

"It's one of your lawyers. You don't want to miss out on a visit with one of them do you?"

With a sigh, Antone sat up on his bed and walked over to the cell door. "Of course not."

The guard opened the doors and slipped the handcuffs on him for the walk to one of the visitor rooms. The walk for Antone was long and boring, and there were a few moments where he actually had the nerve to try and make small talk with the guard who was walking him to the room. When they finally reached the visitor room, the guard took the cuffs off him and allowed him into the room. Antone saw one of his head lawyers sitting at the table talking into a cell phone; his name was Norville Blake.

"What is going on, Norville?" asked Antone as he sat down at the table.

Blake looked up and quickly ended his phone conversation. "Samuel, I kind of have some bad news."

"What? Is it about the trial?"

"No." Blake took a deep breath; to Antone, the man looked as though he was preparing for death. "It's about your daughter."

Antone's heart fell; his darling Nicolette had better be okay. "Is she alright?"

"Yes, well...mostly. You see...she was arrested this morning."

Realization dawned on Antone and suddenly everything made sense. His daughter had done something very stupid, even if it was out of love. There was a definate need for a father-daughter talk as soon as possible.

"Norville, I need you to somehow get me a chance to talk with Nicolette."

XVIIIIV

Mark, Steve, and Amanda had once again retreated to the beach house trying to comprehend the situation. The only person with any information on Jesse's whereabouts was refusing to talk until tomorrow, and with no more leads to work with, they truly were at a dead end.

"What are we going to do?" asked Amanda, staring sadly out at the ocean. She could just imagine Jesse's figure surfing the wonderful waves.

"I don't know," said Steve. "Without Nicolette's cooperation, we have nothing else to go on."

"What about Carla? Mark, you said Dr. McGowan told you she was waking up?" Amanda was hoping the young woman's promising prognosis would somehow help them to locate Jesse.

"She is," said Mark. "They ran some tests on her, and there doesn't seem to be any brain damage, but she still isn't awake enough to be much help."

"I hope Antone's lawyers don't try and use the accident as some way to try make her an unreliable witness," muttered Amanda.

"I wouldn't put it past him." Steve had spoken to one of Antone's lawyers and had an instant dislike of him. "Why hasn't she asked for a lawyer yet or something?"

"She must have something up her sleeve," said Mark. "She must be planning something. We just have to figure out what it is before's it's too late."

The group fell silent when Mark said "too late." It was the unspoekn fear going around in the group; time was slowly slipping away from them: time that Jesse so desperately needed. They watched the sun set feeling their hope sink as well. In a few hours, Nicolette Antone would finally talk to them, but the three of them couldn't help but wonder if by then it would be too late.

XVIIIIV

His captors needed to decide if they were going to have the door open or closed because Jesse was pretty sure he was going to blind if his eyes had to keep adjusting between light and dark. One of the thugs, thankfully not the sadist Rice, was standing in the doorway of the laundry room staring at him. "Are you sure we shouldn't use another sedative?"

"No!" a voice shouted from beyond the laundry room. "Just grab him. We're not going to use another sedative until we get there."

The thug standing over him shrugged and stooped down. The man grabbed Jesse's shoulders roughly and hauled him to his feet, jarring his aching wrist. Involuntarily, Jesse let out a cry of pain which only made the thug laugh. "Did you guys get the oxygen tank?" asked the thug as he forced Jesse out of the laundry room; this was the first time Jesse got a good look at his prison. It seemed to be a small cabin, and after a glance out the window, Jesse saw that they were a good distance away from L.A., if the pine trees outside the window were any indication.

"Yeah," said Rice; Jesse instantly recognized him from his voice. "They're in the van. Now, throw him in the back of the van, and then do a clean sweep of the cabin. Miss Antone doesn't want anything left, and if she doesn't want it, trust me, we don't want it." Jesse could swear he heard him mutter "pushy bitch" under his breath.

"Right," said the thug, holding Jesse. He forced Jesse across the cabin and out the front door. Jesse blinked against the sunlight, which was brighter than the lights in the cabin, and stumbled when he captor pushed him forward roughly. "Get moving!"

Jesse regained his footing, and he and his captor walked over to the van. The captor let go of him for a moment to open the back of the van, and Jesse knew it was his only chance to escape. Turning quickly, Jesse took off running; fate, however, seemed to be working against him because his stiff legs managed to find a small indent in the ground. He tripped and went crashing to the ground jarring his aching arm. Jesse started taking deep breaths to try and cool the pain, but it didn't help. It also didn't help when the thug roughly grabbed his already sore arm and hauled him back to his feet.

"Bad move!" the thug said angrily as he sent a fist flying into Jesse's stomach. The young doctor doubled over in pain, and the thug threw him into the back of the van. As Jesse gasped for air, he could only think that his one chance for freedom had been ruined by a hole in the ground. Things were not looking good for him.

After laying in the back of the van for a few minutes, Jesse wasn't sure exactly how long it was, the thugs finally got into the van. The drive from the cabin was far from pleasent as he rolled around. He winced every time his wrist was jarred.

An eternity seemed to past, but the van finally did stop. "We're here."

Rice got out of the driver's seat and went to the back of the van. The door was opened, and Jesse cried in pain when Rice pulled him harshly out of the van. Jesse almost fell, but thankfully managed to stay on his feet. When he stood up, Jesse saw where they were, and all his hopes faded quickly.

"A-a-a cemetery?" Jesse stammered out. Nicolette's words suddenly came back to him.

_"Bury him. He's a dead man anyway."_

"Oh God." Before Jesse could say thing else, a needle was jabbed into his arm. His already exhausted body quickly gave into the sedative.

XVIIIIV

Nicolette looked up at Mark and Steve as they walked into the interrogation room, and Steve's blood boiled when he saw she actually had the nerve to yawn.

"I see you finally listened when I said I would talk to you tomorrow. I'll be happy to speak with you. May I ask you a question first? How was your visit with my father?"

Steve tilted his head and studied Nicolette carefully. "How did you know that?"

"I have my ways Lt. Sloan." She smiled as Steve and Mark took a seat across the table from her.

"We would like to ask you some questions involving Carla Berglass and a doctor named Jesse Travis," said Steve.

"What about them?"

"We know that Carla Berglass is the main witness in the trial against your father; she was run down outside the police station. It seems that a man named Robert Franklin commited that offense. He was found executed in an alley."

"Is there a question in there, Lt. Sloan?"

"Yes. Did you know we can connect you to them?"

"How?"

"You work for your father hiring and firing employees. We know Robert Franklin once worked for one of your father's companies."

"Does the fact I have job make me a criminal?"

Steve sighed and decided to take a different approach. "We have a witness that can place you at the kidnapping of Dr. Travis."

Nicolette remained smiling, but her tone had changed slightly. "You see, now you actually have something."

"Where is Dr. Travis?" demanded Steve angrily.

"Did you ever wonder why I would even care about Dr. Travis after the man he saw had been killed?" asked Nicolette, tilting her head slightly. "It seems kind of silly to put myself at risk going after someone who couldn't possibly be an actual threat to me." She paused and carefully studied the unamused looks on Steve and Mark's faces. "I did a bit of research on Dr. Travis, Jesse if I may, and found out that he was a close friend of both you, Lt. Sloan, and Dr. Sloan." She smiled. "My kidnapping of Dr. Travis was more of an...insurance policy." Steve was about to say something, but Nicolette held up her hand to cut her off. "Don't get so excited about me confessing to kidnapping your friend. There is one thing you don't know, where your friend is. You see, I was supposed to call a few of my associates yesterday at one. I didn't, and they, right now, should be following through with some instructions I gave them."

"What do you mean?"

"Dr. Travis is my insurance policy. If I don't work out some sort of deal that I like, well, let's just say Dr. Travis only has a few hours left."

"Here's a deal," said Steve angrily, standing up and looming above Nicolette, "you tell us where Jesse is or-"

"Steve!" Mark had placed a hand on his son's arm and coaxed him back to sitting down.

Steve took a few deep breaths, and once again decided to try another tactic. "Carla Berglass, do you know she was in the hospital?"

Nicolette shrugged. "I'd heard. Comatose, wasn't she?"

"She woke up."

Nicolette's tan, attractive face turned pale. "It doesn't matter."

"She will testify."

Nicolette shook her head. "If you don't make me a deal, I will still tell you where Dr. Travis, but not for a few hours...four. I don't see why it will really matter. You'll just have to bury him again anyways..." Suddenly realizing what she had said, Nicolette quickly closed her mouth.

Realization dawned on Mark, and he quickly stood up from the table. "Steve, where's that list of companies Samuel Antone owned?"

"In my office. Why?"

"Go get them!" Mark smiled nervously, but for the first time in days he had hope. "I think I know where Jesse is!"

**TBC**


	13. Chapter XIII

Title: The Roommate

Author: Roth

Rating: T

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters nor the concept of Diagnosis Murder

Summary: Jesse witnesses a murderer fleeing the crime scene when a young woman is killed.

Note: Well, not the best ending I could have come up with, but the story is finished. YAY! (You know, just over three years later. A new record!)

**The Roommate**

Chapter XIII

"_I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." Voltaire_

"Dad," said Steve, watching as his father searched through the stack of papers listing all of Samuel Antone's 'business ventures.' "What are you looking for?"

"The other day," replied Mark, quickly flipping through the pages, "when you showed us all of these businesses, I read through them very carefully. I remember that Samuel Antone owns a funeral home and has a business doing the caretaking for a cemetery. I just need to find out the name of it."

What his father was doing finally dawned on Steve. "You think that Nicolette literally buried Jesse."

"Think about, Steve. She needed a place to keep him. Where is a better place than burying him where no one will look for him...a cemetery. You saw her face when she let it slip that we would just have to bury him again anyway."

Steve nodded. "She actually buried him."

Mark suddenly found the paper and held it triumphantly in the air. "The business is Sunset Graves Caretaking; the cemetery is Rosedale Cemetery. We need to get there as soon as possible."

"I'll call ahead to them cemetery." Steve swallowed. "I just hope we're not too late."

XVIIIIV

Nicolette seethed with anger as she thought about what she had given away to that cop and doctor. All her hard work and planning had been ruined with one slip of the tounge. She wanted Dr. Travis to guarantee herself some safety and perhaps even keep her from spending the rest of her life in jail. Now, she was screwed. Not only was Carla Berglass awake, which told her that the damn reporter would definately be testifying at the trial, but she'd given away her one bargaining chip.

With a sigh, Nicolette laid her head on the table in front of her trying to sort out the thoughts running through her head. _"What am I going to do?"_

"Miss Antone?" said a voice at the door.

Nicolette lifted her head from the table and stared at the person at the door; it was her father's lawyer Norville Blake. "Mr. Blake? What are you doing here?"

"I...um...there is a visitor here for you, but you have to make it quick. You will not believe how many strings I had to pull to get him here." The door opened all the way and Nicolette's jaw dropped when she saw her father, Samuel Antone, standing in the doorway.

"D-dad? What are you doing here?"

"Thank you, Norville, but I won't need your presence here. I would like some alone time with my daughter." Blake nodded and let himself out of the room. "Nicolette, I don't have much time, so I must make this quick. What the Hell did you think you were doing?"

"What?"

"You arranged that hit on Carla Berglass, didn't you?"

"Dad, I was just-"

"Save it. Do you understand what you did? The court can try and pin that on me. They can send me to jail for that alone. My lawyers were working on disproving Miss Berglass, but now that have to make sure no one pins the crime on me. You have ruined everything!"

Nicolette stared at her father; she couldn't believe it. "Dad, I did it for you. I did this all for you."

"That's just great, Nicolette. You ruined everything...for me." Samuel Antone shook his head and turned on his heel. He left the room without another word to his daughter. Nicolette stared at the closed door in complete shock. When she felt a tear start to slip down her cheeks, she angrily wiped them away; her father was going to pay for this.

XVIIIIV

Steve and Mark were met at the cemetery by three police cars and one of the caretakers at the cemetery. "What exactly is going on?" asked one of the officers.

"We're looking for a doctor who was kidnapped from his workplace a few days ago," replied Steve. "We have good reason to believe that he was buried in this cemetery as a way to keep him hidden."

"Wouldn't he be dead?" asked the officer.

"We don't believe so," replied Steve, even though he'd felt his heart skip a little when he thought of Jesse being dead. "We're pretty sure that his kidnappers found someway to keep him alive." Steve turned to the caretaker. "Has there been anyone here today that seemed out of place?"

The caretaker thought for a moment. "A coupla hours ago there was a group here. Three guys. Told me they were visiting there uncle's grave."

"What was odd about them?" asked Mark.

"One of them had an oxygen tank."

"He used an oxygen tank?" said Steve.

"No." The caretaker shook her head. "He was just...carrying it."

"Where were they?" asked Steve, hoping that the man remembered.

The caretaker gestured over his left shoulder. "They were over that way."

"Alright," said Steve; he turned to all the officers who were there to help search for Jesse. "We are going to go search in that direction. We are looking for newly dug graves. It seems as though they may have given Dr. Travis..." That sounded so informal. "They may have given Dr. Travis an oxygen tank. If they were here a couple of hours ago, Dr. Travis may now be running out of air. We need to hurry."

Steve held up a small walkie-talkie. "If anyone finds a grave or anything else that appears to be new, I do mean **brand new**, they are to call over the walkie-talkie. Mr..." Steve turned toward the caretaker. "What is your name?"

"Lyle Manning."

"Mr. Manning is going to be running the backhoe. Get searching...we don't have a lot of time."

The police officers all split up and began searching the cemetery. Mark and Steve went together praying they would be in time to save their friend.

XVIIIIV

Carla Berglass was in pain, but she could live with it. Being in pain meant two things: she was alive and she would be testifying. It was hard for her to stay awake, but at least she _could_ stay awake. Emmie was sitting next to her, talking a mile a minute trying to catch her up on everything that had been going on while she was unconscious. While she appreciated her friend being there, Carla was beginning to wish that she would be quiet.

"Carly? Are you still with me?"

Carla turned her head slowly and saw Emmie staring at her, looking as though she was about to hit the button to page the nurse. "Yeah. I'm just a little tired. What were you saying again?"

"I was saying that our landlord has agreed to give us a different apartment so he can get ours cleaned up. I was there earlier today watching them move our things." She paused for a moment. "Is that okay with you?"

"It's weird," said Carla slowly; her chest was aching and her eyes were slowly drooping. "I certainly don't want to go back to where Darci was murdered though."

"She may have been a real bitch," said Emmie, not really caring how her friend felt about her words, "but I'm...going to miss her."

"I'm-I'm...gonna put...Samuel...Antone away..." Carla's eyes slid closed. "For..what he's..."

XVIIIIV

Steve and Mark were desperately searching the cemetery for any sign of where Jesse could possibly be; so far they'd come up empty. "Anything?" said Steve as they made their way through another row of headstones; it was the fourth time he'd asked, but with time running out for Jesse, Steve couldn't help but pray for some indication of where their friend was.

Up ahead, Steve spotted a mound of dirt which was about halfway as high as the gravestone in front of it; it was obvious that someone had recently dug up that area. Mark must have seen it too because he started walking faster along with Steve. Both of them were hoping that this particular plot was going to be the one that held their friend, as strange as that sounded.

Mark reached the plot first and quickly inspected the gravestone. He smiled inwardly when he saw there was nothing written on the gravestone. "Is this the one?" asked Steve, upon reaching the gravestone.

"There is nothing written," said Mark. "I think that this is only supposed to be a marker." Steve and Mark both inspected the mound and found that it was still somewhat wet. "Get Mr. Manning over here as fast as possible; I think we've found him."

Steve nodded and pulled the walkie-talkie from where it was hooked to his belt. "Mr. Manning, you need to get the backhoe over here as fast as possible."

_"Where to?"_ asked the caretaker.

Steve gave him the location based off of the names on the gravestones around him and went back to where his father was standing. Mark was staring at the dirt sadly. "We're gonna get him back, Dad," said Steve, setting his hand on his father's shoulder. "We're gonna get him back."

"I know. I'm just starting to wonder if it's going to be in time."

The wait for the backhoe was agonizing for both of them. They had to stand there and do nothing while time could slowly be running out for their friend. Letting out matching sighs of relief when the backhoe finally came up the path along with an assortment of police officers who had been searching. Steve and Mark both backed out of the way so the backhoe could get through and waited, rather impatiently, while the grave was dug up. It wasn't easy, but considering them going out there and digging with there own bare hands wouldn't do anything but delay the backhoe from finishing it's job, they stayed put.

There was a thud from the grave which didn't match the normal sounds of digging, and the caretaker suddenly stopped the backhoe and stuck his head out to shout. "I've hit something. They must not have buried him too deep. I'm gonna clear off some more dirt, and then someone's gonna have to go down there."

Steve told the man to continue and tapped his foot impatiently, and Mark was standing next to him swallowing nervously. Mr. Manning could not clear the grave fast enough for either of them. When the caretaker was finally through, both Steve and Mark took off running for the grave. Mr. Manning seemed to have widened the grave more than it would usually be, so Steve had plenty of room when he jumped down into the grave.

He stood as far as he could to the side as and opened the grave. For a brief second, Steve considered it a possibility that this wasn't actually the right spot, and he was opening some poor unfortunate soul's coffin. He let out a sigh of relief when he did not see a rotted corpse in the coffin but instead the incredibly pale face of Jesse; an oxygen mask provided his friend air to keep him alive. He only allowed himself a moment of relief before quickly getting to work on getting help for his friend.

"I need someone's help!" Steve shouted up. Another officer jumped down into the shallow grave and helped Steve lift the unconscious Jesse out of the coffin. Steve and the officer set Jesse down on the ground several feet away from the grave. Mark immediately knelt next to his young friend; his heart practically stopped when he saw the Jesse wasn't breathing. Frantically pulling the mask off Jesse's face, Mark was surprised to find that no air was coming through the mask. With a shaking hand, Mark felt for a pulse on Jesse's neck and let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding when he felt a heartbeat beneath it.

"Dad?"

"He's alive, son, but he's not breathing." Mark titled Jesse's head back and started mouth to mouth.

Steve stood the side, holding his own breath as his father tried to get Jesse breathing. He counted silently as his father counted aloud, and he'd wait impatiently to see if any of the breaths did anything.

It seemed like for ever, but Jesse finally took a shuddering breath on his own. "Thank God," whispered Mark quietly. He was concerned when Jesse didn't wake up right away, but at least he was breathing.

Mark looked up and met the worried eyes of his son. "Where's that ambulance?"

Steve finally took a deep breath. "It's on it's way down here now."

Mark nodded and returned his attentions to Jesse and was only vaguely aware of Steve kneeling down on the other side of their friend. Mark was doing a quick scan of Jesse to see what else could be wrong; his left wrist was brusing badly and there was an ugly gash on his forehead, but there were no other injuries Mark could detect.

"I'm gonna call Amanda and tell her we're on our to the hospital."

Mark sighed, mentally berating himself for not calling her sooner. "I forgot about Amanda; she is gonna kill us for not telling her."

Steve set his hand on the unconscious Jesse's shoulder. "She's just gonna be happy we've got him back."

Mark nodded and looked back down at Jesse; knowing that his young friend was okay lifted a huge weight off of Mark's chest that had been there since Steve told him that Jesse had witnessed the crime.

XVIIIIV

"He just can't seem to stay out of here," said Amanda quietly, setting her hand on Jesse's shoulder. Since he'd been brought in, Jesse's wrist had been set, the gash on his forehead had been cleaned up nicely, and he'd been given a thorough check up to make sure he was okay. Despite a little bruising from what looked like him being roughed up from his captor, he seemed to be okay. Mark and Amanda hadn't left his room, and Steve was only gone to sort a few things out down at the station.

"They seemed to have given him a sedative," said Mark. "It'll probably be a little while still before he wakes up, but it doesn't seem to have been too strong."

Steve nodded and jumped slightly when his cellphone started ringing. He answered it quickly. "Lt. Sloan?" Amanda and Mark both stared at him as he spoke to whoever was on the other end. "What? Really?" Another pause. "No...um...just take her statement, make sure she has her lawyer if she wants him." Another pause. "Do you know why?" Steve's mouth dropped a little as the person spoke. "Oaky. Call me later and tell me what she says. Thanks. Good bye."

Amanda and Mark both looked to Steve expectantly. "What?"

"What was that about?" asked Amanda.

"Nicolette Antone just told one of the officers down at the precint that she wants to testify against her own father. She has agreed to give all the information about her affairs as she can. She wanted a deal for the whole kidnapping and murder, but she still agreed."

"Why?" asked Mark, very suspicious of the young woman who'd done so much damage.

"All the officer said is that it probably had something to do with her father coming in and talking to her."

"What?" said Mark. "When?"

"Today, when we were looking for Jess."

Mark, Amanda, and Steve were all confused by Nicolette Antone's sudden change, but any thoughts of her were suddenly banished when a soft groan broke through the silence of the room. All three turned to the bed and saw that Jesse was slowly regaining consciousness.

"Jess!" said Mark, hurrying over to the side of the bed. "Jesse, how are you feeling?"

Jesse looked between his three friends and swallowed hard. It was several seconds before he said anything, but he finally did. "They buried me." His voice was hoarse.

Steve and Amanda both looked at each, and Mark took a deep breath. "Yeah. Um...Jess, were you awake?"

Slowly shaking his head, Jesse leaned back against his pillow. "No. I was awake until we got to the cemetery, and then they gave me a sedative. It's just...just before they took me there that woman...you said her name was Nicolette...she said "Bury him. He's a dead man anyway." I kind of guessed."

Amanda hurried over to Jesse's bed. "Are you okay, Jess?" She set her hand on his shoulder as Jesse shut his eyes.

"I didn't think anyone was coming." Jesse took a shuddering breath and then slowly reopened his eyes. He looked up at Steve, Mark, and Amanda. Swallowing hard, Jesse gave them all a shaky smile. "Tha-thanks..."

XVIIIIV

_Two Weeks Later..._

"How are you feeling, Carla?" asked Mark; he and Jesse had stopped into the young reporter's new room to check on her. She'd been moved out of the ICU about a week before.

In the couple of weeks that had passed, many things had happened. The men who'd helped to kidnap Jesse had been caught thanks to a tip from Nicolette, the trial against Samuel Antone had become much stronger thanks to Nicolette's cooperation, and Jesse's wrist had began to heal nicely. He was now well enough to be back at work, even if his work load was lessened do to his wrist. Although, thanks to Nicolette's attempt to bury him, Jesse now had a slight problem with enclosed spaces which he was trying very hard to get over with help from his friends.

"I am itching to get out of this hospital bed. Um...how much longer do I have to stay here again?"

"That's all up to your doctor," replied Jesse, "but at least you're out of the ICU."

Carla gave Jesse a small smile. "I'm sorry about all this. I mean...I know I've said it over and over, but..." Carla suddenly stopped and looked past both Mark and Jesse. "Emmie, what are you all dressed up for?"

Mark and Jesse turned around to see a much more collected Emmie than they had seen a couple of weeks ago. The brown stripe in her hair was gone; in fact, all of her hair had been dyed a much more natural looking brunette. She wore a tight pencil skirt and a low-cut silk top.

"I hope you don't mind...I...um...borrowed some clothes from your closet."

Carla shrugged stiffly. "I'm not wearing them."

"Dr. Sloan," said Emmie, "I kind of need to thank you."

"Why?" asked Mark and Jesse in unison.

"Remember the night I had to get stitches?"

Mark nodded, but Jesse just looked confused. "You're not thanking me for that, are you?"

"No. The doctor in the ER, Dr. Carson, who stitched me up, well...we kind of got to talking and well...we're going out tonight. I just stopped in to say good night to Carly, sooo...Good night, Carly!" She gave a wave to her friend and quick nod to both Jesse and Mark before hurrying out of the room.

"I hope Dr. Carson knows what he's getting himself into," muttered Jesse.

Carla nodded. "Probably not." She back to Mark and Jesse. "Thanks again."

"You're welcome," said Mark.

He and Jesse both said their goodbyes and left the room. They met Steve and Amanda in the hallway.

"How was she?" asked Steve as he fell into step with Mark, Jesse, and Amanda.

"She's doing good," replied Jesse. "If her physical therapy goes well, she'll no doubt be testifying at that trial."

"I don't know if they'll even need her anymore," said Steve. "Not with Nicolette Antone testifying."

"Did you ever figure out why she agreed to testify?" asked Amanda, burying her hands in the pockets of her labcoat.

"Yeah."

"Well what was it?"

"I'll tell you her exact words." Mark, Steve, and Jesse all turned toward Steve expectantly. "'He pissed me off.' End quote."

"You can't be serious," said Amanda. She, Mark, and Jesse were all just staring at Steve.

"Completely."

**Finem**


End file.
